


chasing rubies

by gigglyjaehyun



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Flirting, Fluff, It is now, M/M, Summer Camp AU, camp-counselor 5sos, is that a tag, this is actually just an excuse for me to write loads and loads of fluff, uh idk i suck at tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2075952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigglyjaehyun/pseuds/gigglyjaehyun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What’s Ashton supposed to do if he ends up sharing the cabin with a cute counselor?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the lizard from tangled

**Author's Note:**

> hiiii it's been 47363 years since i've written a lashton fic and I'M SO SOrry  
> one night i was casually scrolling through tumblr and i saw [this](http://jpglashton.tumblr.com/post/87372944149/hemmoan-summer-camp-counsellor-luke-wearing-the) and my mind literally went into overdrive and this is loosely based off that post.  
> also, side-note, the title is a song by Hudson Taylor :-) Not sure how often updates will be but they hopefully will be pretty consistent since i have most of this pre-written yay  
> anyway let's DIVE IN SHALL WE

Duck duck goose turns into a bad idea when all of the children picked as geese end up slipping more often than not. The grass in the rec field is still a little damp and muddy from the night before and everyone knows that, so it isn’t really a surprise that everyone’s falling. But when Dylan trips onto a rock and ends up bleeding, Ashton decides it’s time for a new, safer game. Perhaps a game that won't require a first-aid kit.

They settle on a game where everyone says something they like that begins with the same letter as their first name — which, in Ashton's opinion, is a great way to get everyone to introduce themselves. The game doesn't go over very well with the kids, it’s kind of dull, but it's all Ashton can think of in a short amount of time.

The rec field is crowded with kids and worried parents, clinging onto their children like they'll never see them again. It's usually like this for the first hour, when the kids are dropped off. All of the counselors are forced to wait in the rec field for their campers to arrive before heading up and claiming bunks in their assigned cabins. With so much time to spare, the counselors have no choice but to preoccupy the kids with games. 

When the final fourth camper arrives, Ashton breaks up their game of Extreme I Spy (it's no different than regular I Spy except for the fact that it has the word "extreme" in front of it) and everyone collects their luggage so they can begin trekking up to the cabin. They weave their way up the dirt path through the forest slowly, Dylan complaining every few minutes about how his knee still hurts while Tanner consistently tells him to stop whining.

Dylan (who, according to the game, likes dogs) seems to be the outgoing one in his group, always having something to say. Tanner (who likes tigers) is the kid that never really got past the age of five, asking Ashton questions about  _every fucking thing in the universe_. Ashton doesn't know the answer to a majority of his questions, but that doesn't stop Tanner from asking them. Him and Dylan seem to get on from the start like peanut butter and jelly, which honestly has Ashton worried about what to expect from the two of them. He knows they already have pranks prepared for the girls and he can only hope they’ll forget about them. The last thing he needs is their group ending up in trouble.

Brandon (who likes basketball) is a bit of a flirt (if a 13-year-old can even be described as one). Ashton saw him in the rec field shooting girls glances from across the field, sometimes even daring to greet a few of them. Young love: what a beautiful thing. 

Josh (who likes jellyfish) is the quiet one in the group who seems to be captivated by the idea of secluding himself. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just that Ashton knows it's going to be hard trying to get him involved in activities when the kid would much rather read a book. On the other hand, when Ashton told his campers to gather up their bags, Josh was the only one that heard him the first time, meaning he's keen on paying close attention to instructions. That's a huge relief for Ashton; Dylan and Tanner are plenty of work for him as it is.

It is Ashton’s first year as a counselor and to say that he’s worried is a bit of an understatement. He didn’t truly realize how scared he was of children until the week before camp, and by that point it was far too late to back out. He’d already been assigned a group and designed his nametag (which he was quite proud of) and, though he considered it, it wasn’t like he was going to randomly injure himself to conjure up an excuse. He had more dignity than that.

Ashton has two younger siblings that he takes care of every day, but there’s something entirely different about the situation when the kids aren’t your family. He thinks he should be more prepared for this, but he's not.

The campers don’t even know his real name, though, so he figures that’s a bonus.

This year the counselors' names are Disney themed, so all of the counselors picked names accordingly (Ashton goes as Pascal). The only problem is that sometimes Ashton forgets to call Calum and Michael by their counselor names, because when his brain sees Calum and Michael, it thinks “Calum and Michael”, not “Copper and Olaf”. So now the kids, whom Ashton has known for less than an hour, know that Olaf’s name starts with the letter M and Michael’s probably going to be pestered about it for the next week, courtesy of Ashton. Oh well.

Ashton’s group has the blue cabin, one of the smaller lodges huddled under a cluster of trees and, thankfully, within an average walking distance of the bathrooms. Nothing worse than hiking half a mile in the dark at two in the morning just to use the restroom — Ashton would know.

“Why isn't it blue?” Tanner asks, dropping his sleeping bag onto the gravel to catch his breath.

“Why aren't you tan?” Dylan shoots back, and Ashton almost chokes before scolding Dylan and reminding him that this is a “positive environment”. 

Ashton thinks they might be the first group assigned the blue cabin that gets to claim their bunks, but when he makes his way up the steps and opens the door, there's already another group occupying the place, jumping around noisily. And Ashton's fine with that, as long as he gets the bunk he wants.

So, after directing his campers to pick out any remaining bunks, he makes his way down the center of the cabin and to the far wall, freezing when he finds someone sitting on his favorite bunk in the corner, straightening out their sleeping bag. Ashton walks over and stares at the mystery counselor blankly for a few seconds. 

“That’s my bunk,” Ashton says bluntly, dropping his bags loudly on the floor to make a point. The stranger turns around, all perfectly-styled blond hair and blue eyes, and  _fuck_ , what’s Ashton supposed to do if he ends up sharing the cabin with a cute counselor? He doesn’t remember learning that in training.

“Didn’t see your name on it,” the counselor states, trying to sound intimidating but obviously stepping a bit too far out of his comfort zone for it to make any difference. It's cute, Ashton thinks. He's cute.

Ashton can faintly make out his nametag; can barely read that his counselor name starts with the letter N. It’s weird that Ashton doesn’t already know the guy — everyone was supposed to get to know each other at training.

“Well, I’m older than you, and I’m telling you to get another bunk.” Ashton’s not actually sure if that’s true; he hopes it is.

“I was here first,” the counselor insists. “And, anyway, if you're older, shouldn't you be the bigger person in this situation?” The counselor stands up with a teasing grin, looking down at Ashton pointedly (is he making fun of Ashton’s height?), and he can read his nametag now: Nemo. “Sorry —” Nemo leans forward and squints at Ashton’s nametag “— Pascal. Wait, like the lizard from Tangled?”

“Chameleon,” Ashton corrects, rolling his eyes as he tosses his stuff onto the bunk across from Nemo’s. Nemo laughs quietly and Ashton tries not to get irritated as he unrolls his red sleeping bag.

“Why are you so worked up about a bunk?” Nemo asks.

“That’s the only bunk with a power outlet next to it,” Ashton mumbles with his back turned. Nemo laughs and Ashton rolls his eyes again, despite Nemo not being able to see this time. There's probably going to be a lot of eye-rolling as long as Ashton's sharing the cabin with Nemo.

“You’re in the middle of a forest, miles away from civilization and all you can think about is your electronics?”

Ashton sits on his bunk, the mattress making a squeaking sound below his weight, and Nemo does the same across from him. “Just because I’m in a forest doesn’t mean I'm a savage,” Ashton says.

“It means you can suck it up for a week,” Nemo chimes in, and Ashton glares at him.

“Who are you?” Ashton asks. “You weren’t at training.”

“Nemo,” he replies, holding up his nametag much closer to Ashton’s face than necessary. It’s a colorful nametag, Ashton decides, though the clownfish looks more like a cheeto. “And I  _was_ at training,” Nemo says, pulling his nametag back down.

“No — like, what’s your  _real_ name?” Ashton asks again, lowering his voice.

Nemo clicks his tongue and smiles. “You don’t get to know that until the end of the week.”

“But I’m another counselor,” Ashton complains. “It’s for emergency purposes.”

“Emergency purposes?” Nemo repeats thoughtfully, a patronizing grin on his face. “Like?” 

“Like if you’re dying in the middle of the woods and I need to save you, you probably wouldn’t want me telling the paramedics that your name is Nemo.”

“You probably won’t be saving me,” Nemo says. “If anything,  _you’re_ the one that’s going to need saving.”

Ashton snorts. The cocky attitude isn't really playing off very well, and instead of feeling intimidated by the counselor, he's only filled with adoration. “That's really grand coming from someone who named himself after a fish that gets lost easily.”

“It's not like my name actually  _is_ Nemo.”

“Then what  _is_ your name?”

Nemo smiles and gets up to go help a camper that's been calling him for the past five minutes, leaving Ashton staring at his back with confusion. He thinks that's cruel.

◊

His name's Luke, which Ashton discovers on the way down to the dining hall for dinner. He has no idea how Michael knows that and he doesn't, nor does he have any idea why Luke won't tell him on his own, but he can roll with it because Luke has a fucking nice face.

Ashton claims a round table close to the kitchen (he figures that if they're closer to the kitchen then they're closer to the food, so why not?) and stands by his chair while he waits for the other seats to fill. A few younger girls show up to his table, beaming up at Ashton while they pick their seats, and he tries not to feel uncomfortable about it.

There's still one more open seat at their table and they're about to sit down when suddenly another counselor fills that seat.

“Hey,” Luke grins.

“It's one counselor per table,” Ashton says, ignoring the way his stomach flips at the sight of Luke and taking a seat as the campers copy him. The girls begin filling up their glasses and passing the water pitcher around.

“There's no  _rule_ for it,” Luke insists. “And there's no other tables left,” he shrugs, accepting the water pitcher from the small brunette girl next to him. “So I figured I'd join my friend,” he finishes with a smirk as he passes the water pitcher to Ashton.

“ _Friend_?” Ashton repeats, pouring the crystal water carefully into his glass. “No — I don't think we're friends. Definitely not friends. You stole my favorite bunk.”

“Is this a thing you do? Hold grudges on people who steal your favorite bunks?”

“Yes,” Ashton deadpans. “Especially if they're named after animated fish. That part's a deal-breaker. We can never be friends.” Ashton catches Luke smirking out of the corner of his eye.

Ashton reaches over to hand the pitcher off to the camper sitting next to him, but as he moves it over, the bottom of the jug hits his glass of water (that he literally just filled, goddamn it), falling over and spilling out onto the wooden surface. In a blur of one swift movement, he picks his cup back up and grabs the stack of paper towels from the center of the table, dropping it onto the puddle.

He scoots back a little to avoid the water dripping over the edge of the table and onto his lap, but it’s a bit too late. “Shh —” Ashton stops himself and notices Luke widening his eyes as a warning “— amWow.” 

“What?” Luke says.

“ShamWow,” Ashton states, this time with a little more confidence. “It would be really nice to have a ShamWow right now.” He can hear some of the campers giggling at him while he courageously tries to soak up the puddle. The thin stack of paper towels isn't really working, but it's a valiant effort on his part.

Luke frowns at him. “ShamWow. Like. The towel?”

Ashton stares dully at Luke for a moment. “Yes, the towel. Speaking of which, why don't yougo geta towel?”

Luke nods and looks up at the campers sitting around him. “I'll give a bead to whoever wants to get a towel,” he announces. Almost immediately, two girls jump up and volunteer, heading off to the kitchen quickly. 

The beads are a stupid system, in Ashton's opinion. They're the head counselor's idea of motivating the kids (it's actually just weak bribery), and since Ashton's a bit scared of the head counselor, he automatically hates it. Plus, as a camper himself, he was always the kid in his cabin that had the least amount of beads around his nametag. Every fucking year.

“Really?” Ashton groans at Luke. “You couldn't just get one yourself?”

Luke shrugs. “I could,” he says admittedly. “But now I'm teaching the kids all about what it's like to have  _responsibility_.” 

“I'm sure you would know all about that,” Ashton remarks; Luke beams at him proudly. Ashton's going to have to explain to him what sarcasm is later. 

Ashton sits there awkwardly for the next minute while everyone else at the table begins dishing out their food. He looks back at the kitchen entrance longingly, waiting for the girls to hurry up and return.

“What are you doing?”

Ashton turns around to see Calum hovering behind him with a look of confusion and a basket of breadsticks in hand.

“Um, so, I spilled my water,” Ashton explains. “And I guess I’m, like, trying to clean it up? Sort of?”

“Typical,” Calum sighs, and Ashton kicks him in the ankle before he can leave.

Ashton had no idea that retrieving a towel would be such a time-consuming task. By the time he's cleaned up the mess, returned the towel back to the kitchen staff, and sat down ready to eat, almost all of the food has vanished and dinner's halfway over. He ends up forcing down his food in what few minutes are left of dinner, mentally regretting the stomachache he’ll have later.

Once dinner’s over, the counselors herd their kids over with them to the rec field for group photos. The setting sun is glowing warm colors over the open meadow, framed by the forest around it. The soccer nets are set up on either end of the field and there are picnic benches perched on the sides, crawling with children on them.

While waiting for their pictures, some of the female counselors are doting over their kids like mothers would, braiding the girls’ hair and picking daisies off the field to tuck behind their ears. Though Ashton’s not a girl, he decides to join in on this trend, putting his own little spin on it.

When Michael swings by Ashton’s table and sees that he’s tying bandanas on his campers' heads, he lets out a snort and Ashton elbows him in the ribs.

“They agreed to do this!” Ashton protests, looking over at Tanner and Dylan, who are helping each other tie their bandanas on. Good — teamwork. They can base their week off of something inspiring like that.

“’m surprised that anyone would agree to look like you,” Michael comments. “One of you is more than enough.” Ashton reaches a hand over to mess up Michael’s freshly-dyed green hair, fluffing it up in the wrong direction. Michael lets out a grumble of annoyance and carefully tries to fix it, aiming a kick at Ashton’s ankle and instead hitting the leg of the table behind him.

“Sorry,” Ashton says, though his tone is far from apologetic, “you had some grass in your hair.”

“How many times do we have to go over this?” Michael groans. “The ‘grass in your hair’ jokes aren’t — and never will be — funny.”

“Shouldn’t’ve dyed it green, then,” Ashton shrugs. “Broccoli-head,” he adds in. “Don’t you have your own group to be watching over?”

Michael turns around and points to a group of boys kicking a soccer ball around the field. “Already got our pictures. The head counselor decided to start a soccer match and they decided that was more interesting than hanging out with me, so.” Michael pouts a little bit.

Ashton squints at the campers and brings a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. “You had a group of nine kids?” he asks. “Wow. Must be pretty chaotic.”

“No, I think Calum —” Michael stops himself quickly and darts his eyes around to make sure no one caught him, “I think  _Copper’s_ kids joined them. Copper’s off flirting with Nemo or something. That sounds really inappropriate. Maybe the names shouldn’t have been Disney themed.”

Ashton frowns at the mention of Calum and Luke together. “Are they…?” He waggles his eyebrows, as if that’s supposed to clear things up.

“At camp?” Michael asks incredulously. “God, I hope not. Outside of camp?” Michael shrugs as an answer to his own question and Ashton can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy in his stomach and he doesn’t know why. He’s known Luke for less than six hours and getting jealous over someone this quickly would be a new record for him. “Why don’t you ask them?” Michael offers, pointing to Calum and Luke who appear to be walking over to join them.

“Oh my god,” Calum gasps when his eyes land on Ashton’s campers, each of them wearing a different-colored bandana. “I didn’t know they made cloning legal.”

“Good thing you didn’t know because we wouldn’t want another one of you, would we?” Ashton teases; Calum scowls at him and Luke tries to cover up his laugh but doesn’t do a very good job of it.

“Hey, I’m surprised Olaf didn’t dye his campers’ hair using that spray-dye junk you get in those convenience stores,” Luke says. “We could have little rainbow heads running around camp.”

“I’m teaching my campers a trick,” Michael suddenly beams, ignoring Luke’s comment. “They’re like little minions; they listen to anything you tell them.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re teaching them how to swear,” Ashton says.

“No — better than that,” Michael promises with a smile. “But it’s a surprise, a work in progress. We’ll have it down by the end of the week. Luke, you're gonna love it.” 

Everyone shoots him a worried look (for more than one reason), and, well. Everything Michael says usually results in a worried look, so he isn't even bothered by it. However, Ashton's quite curious to know what Michael has in stock, especially if it has to do with Luke. In fact, there are a lot of things Ashton wants to know about Luke.

So he makes that his mission for the week: make new friends, specifically Luke.


	2. nerf wars and tie-dyeing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: i went to three different summer camps when i was younger

It's seven in the morning and Nickelback is blasting throughout the cabin, and Ashton's first natural reaction — apparently — is to roll off his bunk and injure himself with a very loud thud. He falls painfully on his shoulder, his sleeping bag only cushioning the fall slightly, and makes a mental note to find an ice-pack later. It’s a miracle he has one of the lower bunks because, god, if he had one of the top bunks he would definitely be heading to the emergency room.

“What is that,” he mutters into his pillow, his voice coming out a little croaky and weak and slightly muffled under the music. The cabin is mostly dark; a dampened glow of light streaming in through the thin upper curtains sends a muted blue color throughout the cabin, but not enough for him to make out his surroundings. 

The music is shut off suddenly and the cabin is lingered with bare silence for a moment. A few seconds later there's a quiet shuffling sound coming from the bunk next to his and Ashton looks up from his spot on the floor, only to see the blur of someone sitting and leaning over him. He should really start wearing his glasses again.

“Nickelback,” the blur answers, nudging Ashton lightly with their foot, and — oh. Right. Hot counselor. Ashton sort of forgot about that in his sleep.

“Why?” Ashton groans, rolling away from the touch and wincing as his shoulder hits the bottom of his own bunk.

“Because you have to help me get the campers up and down to the dining hall. We have kitchen duty this morning.”

“Kitchen duty,” Ashton repeats slowly. “What? Like knives and forks and stuff?”

“Yes; knives and forks and stuff. Why are you on the floor, by the way?”

Ashton makes an effort to sit up but only falls back on the floor again in a tangle of limbs and a sleeping bag. “Nickelback,” he answers dully. “Really loud.”

Luke crawls out of his bunk and flips on the light switch to the cabin. Ashton can hear him trying to wake everyone up and realizes that he should probably be helping him, but. His shoulder hurts and he's a lazy shit. He can hear the campers skittering around the cabin, making far more noise than necessary, and he smiles to himself when he thinks about how great of a role model he is, lying on the floor half-asleep.

“Pascal,” a voice says. It's definitely not Luke, though, unless he went through some sort of reverse-puberty shit, because the voice is approximately three octaves too high. “If you don't wake up, we'll be late.” Ashton responds with a quiet  _mrph_ and, this time, he really tries to wake up.

By the time Ashton finally wiggles his way out of his sleeping bag, all of the campers are jumping around with so much energy that he kind of despises them for being so happy this early. It's not fair. 

“That's really embarrassing,” Luke says, walking up to Ashton, who's clumsily trying to slip a gray hoodie on. He thought he almost had it on until he realized he was trying to get his head through one of the sleeves and ends up pulling it off and starting over again. “These kids are younger than you, yet somehow five times more responsible than you.”

“Fuck off,” Ashton mutters into the fabric.

“Hey! Keep things rated PG!” Luke sounds genuinely upset and Ashton's kind of sorry, he supposes. Luke looks around quickly to check for any nearby campers but is relieved to see them all huddled around the door, engrossed in their own bubbly conversations. Ashton pulls his hoodie down around him and shakes his hair, trying to look somewhat presentable. “You know what I do when I'm grumpy in the morning?” Luke says.

“I’m not grumpy.”

Luke flashes a smile and bounces away quickly, leaving Ashton stranded in the middle of the cabin, grumpy. He returns with a stuffed penguin and Ashton rolls his eyes so hard that he isn't sure if they’ll ever go back to their original position. Luke's smile quickly fades and turns into a scowl as he uses the stuffed penguin to smack Ashton on the side of the head.

“Don't be like that. It’s rude. His name is Pengey.”

Ashton laughs. Really loudly. “ _Pengey?_ ” he repeats. “Wow, that's  _so creative_. You're a  _genius;_  you named a penguin  _Pengey_.” Ashton sounds a bit hysterical at this point, and he's not sure if it's due to exhaustion or the fact that Luke is disgustingly cute. 

“You can cuddle him if you want,” Luke suggests, holding out the stuffed critter. Ashton makes eye contact with Pengey and can almost swear that its beady, factory-produced eyes are looking up at him with sad hopefulness. Ashton decides that he's really stupid — and possibly whipped — when he takes the stuffed animal, wraps his arms around it and hugs it up by his neck, rubbing his nose in its fur. Luke lights up like an eight-year-old on Christmas morning and Ashton feels a bit light-headed, trying to force back a smile.

It’s kind of endearing how Luke is so innocent like that, like he’s just a kid that never really grew up. The happiness that’s always swimming in his bright blue eyes says that he hasn’t been through the rough times of life yet — hasn’t had to stay awake late at night trying to sort his problems out, with time ticking on threateningly. Or maybe he has, and he’s just good at hiding it. Either way, it says that he still finds joy in the simple things, and Ashton doesn’t want to shatter that.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” Ashton says, tossing Pengey back to Luke.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Luke says proudly. “You two can be friends now.” Luke tosses the stuffed animal onto his bunk and they begin leading the campers out of the cabin.

The early morning air is cool and relaxing, a nice break to the typical humid summer days. There are still clouds of fog lingering off in the distance and a layer of dew soaking over the grass, and it’s nice, really. It’s nice being able to take in the peacefulness while the campers chat quietly amongst themselves.

The walk through the woods is going perfectly fine until Dylan comes up with the brilliant idea to throw rocks at the girls' cabins and Luke and Ashton end up spending half the hike reminding him and Tanner that the girls are still asleep and they probably won't love them if they continue to launch things at them. Dylan claims that he doesn't care if the girls love him or not. Luke tells him that someday he  _will_ care, and he finally grumbles quietly and stops.  

Ashton has no clue who came up with the brilliant idea of assigning the blue cabin to do kitchen duty on the first morning of camp (really, they’re a group of rowdy boys, would you really want them dealing with sharp objects on the first day?). They take one step into the dining hall and Ashton knows things are going downhill. Though Luke reminds the boys  _six times_ that the forks go on the left and the knives and spoons on the right, they end up passing by several finished tables that don't follow that setup. A simple task that should only take two minutes ends up taking three times that amount. 

The weird thing is that Luke doesn’t seem to mind; he simply corrects the tables that were set incorrectly and moves on as if it’s no big deal.

“This doesn’t bother you?” Ashton asks Luke while the two of them survey the surrounding tables. Their campers are off gathered up by the whiteboard outside the kitchen door, excitedly chatting about what’s on the menu for the day.

“This? Not really. It’s so much easier just to fix their mistakes for them instead of rambling on to them all morning.”

“That’s not really good, though, is it?” Ashton says. “They’ll never learn anything.”

Luke shrugs slightly. “Makes my job easier.”

“Definitely not a very good role model,” Ashton mumbles jokingly, earning a glare from Luke.

“Says the one who rolled off their bunk this morning and laid on the floor for a solid fifteen minutes,” Luke counters, suddenly reminding Ashton about the pain in his shoulder. “That’s true role-model material right there.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Ashton says. “I  _am_ a true role model, in fact. Thanks for noticing.”

Luke’s walking towards the kitchen to return an extra spoon, but Ashton catches him as he walks past and rubs a hand through Luke’s hair to ruffle it up. Luke scowls and Ashton lets out a laugh, quickly bringing his hand up to cover his mouth. Luke looks back with a smirk as he attempts to fix his hair and Ashton knows his face is probably flushed some horrifying shade of red.

They don’t sit next to each other at breakfast. Ashton doesn’t know why, he figures it’s probably because his laugh scared Luke away or something. But he does catch Luke looking over at him occasionally from the other side of the dining hall, and he ignores the way his stomach flips at that.

◊

To be honest, Luke doesn’t really know what he’s doing. Tie-dyeing was never his forte and he shouldn’t pretend it is. But there are twelve confused children circled around the small square table out on the grass behind the dining hall, trying to copy what Luke’s doing, and — judging the multicolored mess Luke has created — it was a bad idea to put him in charge of the tie-dye station on the first day.

Plus, like, where the fuck is his partner? Why is there no other counselor helping him?

“And there you go,” Luke finishes, holding his slaughtered creation in the air for the children to gawk at. The shirt is all scrunched up, secured by rubber-bands, and the kids look more horrified than excited.

“Is it supposed to look like a dead chicken?” a little girl asks.

“If you try hard enough, you can probably get it to look like a  _live_ chicken,” Luke supplies. He drops the damp shirt onto the table with a sigh, and begins pulling the rubber-bands off when he hears someone come up next to him. “Thank god, you have no idea how much I need help with —”

“What  _is_ that?”

Luke turns around to see Ashton staring judgmentally down at his work and can’t help but feel offended.

“A tie-dyed shirt,” Luke answers defensively. “I think.”

“It looks like it was alive at one point.”

“Maybe it was.” Luke takes his artwork over to the clothesline and clips it on with some clothespins. It looks a little sad and most of the kids have lost their attention-span at this point, talking amongst themselves. “Please tell me you know how to tie-dye things.”

“I know a few tricks, yeah,” Ashton says, and a sigh of relief washes over Luke. “And, first off, you probably should’ve used gloves.” Luke looks down at his hands, drenched in purple, red, and orange colors. Fuck. He knew he was forgetting something. How do you forget that? “And, like,” Ashton picks up the empty box, “you know there were instructions on the back?”

“They’re in Russian!” Luke protests. Ashton looks down at the words and suddenly his eyes widen.

“Why do you have a Russian tie-dyeing kit?” he asks. Luke shrugs.

The next hour is, to be blunt, a disaster. As soon as they let the kids give tie-dyeing a shot of their own, everything spins out of control.

Two of the boys decide to have a color fight, squirting the bottles of dye at each other, and once Luke and Ashton manage to separate them, they only begin spraying the colors at the girls, who are having none of it. They squeal and scream and push the boys over, rambling on about how it’s not funny. Finally Ashton ends up confiscating the bottles of dye from the two boys, which only leads to even more screaming and complaining, and Luke decides to preoccupy the girls with a game of Down by the Banks while Ashton tries to calm the boys down from their tantrums.

They end the hour with a grand total of three tie-dyed shirts up and hanging, one of them being the dead chicken. And Luke’s hands are still purple and he doesn’t know how long that’s going to last, so fuck. The table’s a mess and almost all of the bottles are empty, which doesn’t make sense considering they only finished three shirts.

“I can’t do this,” Ashton says when the campers have all headed in the dining hall for lunch. He’s leaning on the table, all of the patience and energy sucked out of him. “Matthew said he hates me because I took away the colors. Like, genuinely  _hates_ me. As in, doesn’t want to see my face ever again.”

“Don’t we all?” Luke teases, and Ashton pouts. “I’m sorry,” Luke says. He’s about to pat Ashton on the back reassuringly until he remembers that his hands are still purple and he stops himself at the last second. “Our game of Down by the Banks was really fun, though.”

Luke pulls out a thin cardboard box from underneath the table and begins putting away the empty bottles. Though the table was covered with a clear plastic tarp, the surface of it still ends up splattered with faint colors. Ashton pulls the tarp off the table once Luke’s removed the dye bottles.

“I can’t believe this,” Luke says, looking pitifully down at his hands like they’re a painting an artist just butchered.

“What, your hands?” Ashton says, folding the tarp up and tucking it away neatly in the box. “It should wash off in a few days. Let me see them.”

Luke holds his hands out, palms facing up, for Ashton to look at. The sun illuminates their purplish hue and Luke sulks. Ashton reaches over to graze over his hands with his own fingers. It’s a gentle, careful touch, and some of the dye rubs off and ends up leaving little purple flecks on Ashton’s own hands, causing him to pull away quickly.

“It’s contagious,” he notes, earning a laugh from Luke.

“So what’s the diagnosis? Am I gonna die?” Luke asks.

“Depends. How do you feel about amputation?”

Luke glares at him, however a small trace of a smile is still left behind and the glare comes out weak and joking.

“You two!” Their heads snap to the direction of the voice to see Calum strolling on the path next to them and up to the dining hall, a small group of children following him. “What are you doing? You know it’s lunch, right?” Calum’s campers jog up the stairs into the dining hall while he stops to talk.

“Yeah,” Luke says, smiling at Ashton briefly. It’s a faint, knowing smile, except Ashton isn’t quite sure what Luke “knows” that he doesn’t know about as well.

Luke picks up the cardboard box with ease and heads into the building with it, leaving Calum and Ashton staring back at him with confusion.

“What was that?” Calum asks tentatively, turning back to Ashton. “He looked suspiciously smug.”

Ashton doesn’t answer — partially because he doesn’t have an answer.

◊

“Okay, guys; listen up!” Ashton announces. The children all huddle up in the middle of their cabin like a cluster of mice, all of them satisfied with just having gotten back from their afternoon activities. “Cabin inspections start tomorrow morning,” Ashton explains, “and right now this place looks like a bomb just exploded in it.”

“Are you talking about Brandon’s farts?” one of Luke’s campers pipes up, and a few of the kids giggle. “Because those are kind of like bombs.”

“Good thing we have air freshener,” Luke says. “But, really guys. If we wanna win the golden plunger then we need to start sorting this place out. Who wants to be on sweeping duty?”

There’s silence among the kids and Luke picks a camper at random. It goes like that for a while until everyone’s assigned their own jobs.

There’s a group outside with blue party streamers, decorating the steps and the windows, and there are kids hastily shoving their suitcases under their bunks. Because, yes, that’s much easier than just zipping the suitcase up.

Ashton finds a roll of blue tape from one of the side-pockets in his bag and stares down at it for a while, wondering how to incorporate it. When he comes up with an idea, he interrupts Luke from straightening out his bunk and shows it to him with enthusiasm.

“Look what I have,” Ashton says. Luke turns around and his eyes land on the tape. The light above their bunks is burned out, casting soft shadows over Luke’s face (which appears to hold an expression of fright). Ashton thinks Luke looks really innocent right there — kneeling by his bunk with a look of confusion written on his face, tiny and vulnerable. Too bad that he’s actually over six feet tall.

“Okay…” Luke says questioningly, staring up at the tape. Ashton waggles his eyebrows and quickly regrets it when his mind catches up to realize how creepy Luke must think he is — holding out a roll of duct-tape to him counselor and doing that thing with his eyebrows. The word ‘bondage’ flashes through his mind and he mentally slaps himself. Perhaps he shouldn’t have done the eyebrow thing. Fucking eyebrows.

“No!” Ashton says, shaking his head quickly and trying to fight the blood from rushing to his face. “Nonono, not like that. Definitely not like that.” Luke still looks a little scared, though. “I was thinking about taping this down on the floor and making a box by the doorway to put our shoes in; maybe that would work. The head counselor digs that. It makes us look organized and stuff.”

“Oh,” Luke nods shakily. “Yeah. Of course. Right. Sounds great.”

“I need your help,” Ashton adds in.

“With what?”

“The tape?” he laughs, waving the roll in front of him. “Unless you’re busy. I can get Josh to help me out.”

Luke stands up, towering over Ashton, and it takes every bone in Ashton’s body to stop him from swearing because why the  _fuck_ is Luke so tall?

They’re just about to finish taping the fourth side of the box when the door to their cabin swings open and Calum’s head peeks out from behind it.

“Get out!” Ashton jumps up, ushering Calum out of the cabin while Luke sits on the floor cross-legged, watching the encounter from a safe place. “We just cleaned this place and you’re not contaminating it.” He attempts to close the door on him and Calum lets out a few protests.

“Hold it!” Calum says, forcing his way in and closing the door behind him. “Just listen.” Calum holds up a Nerf gun from behind his back and Luke gets up and walks over. “Olaf and I have some Nerf guns and dinner’s not for an hour and it’s perfect weather for a Nerf war.”

“Uh… maybe tomorrow?” Ashton says, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “We have a lot of cleaning to do.”

Luke reaches a hand up and flicks him on the head; Ashton lets out a noise of annoyance. That kind of hurt.

“Come on!” Luke says, and Ashton glares at him. “Sorry; this guy doesn’t like having fun,” he tells Calum, who nods in understanding. Ashton hates them. “He’s like the dad of the cabin. Really boring and all that. You got another one of those?”

◊

“Dylan, did you see where Olaf ran off?" Ashton asks. He’s hiding behind the amphitheater with his campers encircling him like mini soldiers. They’re surprisingly good at this game and he’s going to have to give them a few beads once this is over.

“Olaf should’ve melted by now,” Tanner comments. “He’s a snowman, after all.”

“Some people are worth melting for,” Josh says sweetly. Ashton loves that kid.

There weren’t enough Nerf guns for everyone, so they decided to split up by counselors with two guns per group. Dylan and Brandon have the guns now, with Tanner occasionally whining about how they’re “hogging the guns” and “it’s not fair”. Josh doesn’t seem to care — he just follows the group wherever they go and puts in the occasional battle strategy.

“So Dylan, anything?” Ashton asks again.

“No, but…” Dylan pauses, his neck craning around the corner of the stage, “I think I see a penguin?”

Something clicks in Ashton’s head and he leans over to get a better look. “What?”

Dylan points at the familiar stuffed animal sitting on one of the benches, the evening sun outlining it with a glow.

“That’s probably Nemo’s,” Ashton says. “He probably forgot it here.” He straightens up and walks over to the seats to retrieve it. “We should probably grab it for —”

“Wait!” Josh squeaks. He’s only made it a few steps out toward the toy and he’s about to turn around to ask what’s wrong when a Nerf ball hits him square in the neck.

He then decides to break into a full sprint because — well, he’s already started the mission and he decides that if the penguin’s set up as a trap then he’s going to take full advantage of it. Ashton can hear kids shouting at him and Nerf balls are raining to the ground around him, only a few of them actually hitting him, but he makes no effort to slow down, speeding over the gravel. He nosedives for the penguin, snatches it off the wooden bench and runs back to the group.

Ashton throws the penguin to Tanner, who catches it and stares down at it with a puzzled look on his face. Ashton leans against the back of the stage, trying to catch his breath and mentally cursing himself for being so out of shape.

“What are we doing with  _this?_ ” Tanner asks, turning the stuffed animal around in his hands.

“Hostage,” Ashton answers. “They want to see Pengey ever again? They have to surrender, or he goes in the lake.” A hushed ‘ _ooh_ ’ choruses from the boys and Ashton smiles at how clever he is.

It takes them a while to track Luke’s team down, who is conveniently huddled by the lake, and once they do, it’s all just a bloodbath of Nerf balls being shot at each other. But once the two teams calm down upon being reminded that they’re making a cool kidnapping deal — like the ones in the movies — the kids are finally able to put their guns down.

“What did you do with Pengey?” Luke demands once everyone’s quieted down. One of Ashton’s campers shoots a Nerf ball at Luke, which hits him in the chest and bounces onto the dirt.

Ashton opens his mouth to answer but is cut off when Tanner holds Pengey up in the air, grabbing him by the beak.

“Don’t do that!” one of Luke’s campers shrieks in disbelief.

“You have two choices,” Ashton says. “Surrender and Pengey lives. Don’t surrender, and the penguin goes into the lake.” Ashton shrugs. “Your decision.”

It turns out that Luke’s team absolutely, undeniably refuses to surrender — even in situations where the penguin’s life is as stake. Ashton originally had no intent of actually throwing Pengey in the water. He was just going to hold him hostage and use him as bait and keep him as his own if that didn’t work out. But as soon as Luke’s team announces they don’t want to surrender for the critter, Brandon says a simple “okay”, steals the penguin from Tanner, and breaks off running down the gravel path towards one of the docks on the edges of the water.

It’s no wonder that Brandon’s mentioned being on his school’s Track team several times — the kid has quite a set of legs on him.

Ashton tries to stop him — and Luke does too, naturally — but by the time they’ve caught up with him they can already see the penguin floating stiffly on the lake’s surface, its fluff slowly getting weighed down by the water.

“Hey!” someone calls. Everyone turns around from where they’re huddled on the edge of the dock, staring longingly out at the stuffed animal, to see Michael holding his hands up in the air. His navy muscle tank is caked with dirt and he has a few leaves in hair (though no one has the guts to tell him) and Ashton begins to wonder what the hell went down between him and Calum’s groups. “Don’tshootme,” Michael blurts out, and he only gets hit with one Nerf ball before the kids lower their guns. “Dinner starts in a few minutes, so we should probably call it quits and head down to the dining hall.”

“We’re in the middle of a crisis!” Luke exclaims. Michael cranes his neck over the sea of children to get a glance at what’s happening.

Ashton turns to the kids. “Guys, head down with Olaf. Nemo and I have to make sure Pengey doesn’t drown.” Ashton suddenly frowns, shocked by how serious he sounds about the situation.

“Can’t Nemo just swim and rescue him? He’s a clownfish,” Tanner says.

“No — Nemo’s a bad swimmer!” Josh protests. Luke briefly turns around to narrow his eyes at them. “Remember? He has a bad fin.” Olaf decides to jump in, herding the kids off the dock. Ashton thanks him with a wave before he goes to join Luke by the edge of the dock.

“Get in the canoe,” Luke orders while the campers head down to dinner.

“Don’t we need life jackets?” Ashton asks.

“Too late,” Luke answers, heading over to one side of the dock. Luke steps in first, holding his arms out parallel with the water’s surface to maintain his balance. “Don’t  _flip the canoe_ ,” Luke says once he’s taken a seat in the back. Ashton daringly flips him off — something he’s wanted to do from the moment he met him — and climbs in carefully, feeling the canoe wobble beneath his footsteps. He hands Luke a paddle once he’s seated and unties the rope holding the canoe in by the dock.

“Slow down, buddy,” Ashton says when Luke begins furiously paddling away from the shore. They can only see Pengey’s beak now, a faded orange triangle poking through the water’s surface, which means he’s beginning to sink. And —  _fuck_ , that’s not good.

“Look, Pascal,” Luke says from the back seat (rather sassily). “First off — Pascal’s an awful name. It reminds me of that stupid triangle I learned about in Algebra. Should’ve gone as Peter Pan or something.” Ashton frowns. “And, secondly — I don’t know what your real name is, but if I did, I would use that and follow it with a string of swearing right now. But since we’re on camp grounds and Pengey is  _dying_  — no thanks to you — I’ll cut you some slack.” He pauses and Ashton turns around with surprise. “Okay,  _buddy?_ ” Luke finishes, their eyes locking together. Ashton’s jaw slacks. He’s never heard Luke talk so quickly, nor has he ever heard him get so offended about a stuffed animal.

“You’re the one that set Pengey up as a trap!” Ashton exclaims. “For me!” he adds in.

“And you kidnapped him!” Luke points out. “Who kidnaps stuffed penguins?” Ashton thinks canoeing with the cute counselor would be really enjoyable if they weren’t yelling at each other.

It takes them a few minutes to get things coordinated, about who should paddle on which side of the canoe and tiny things like that. Luke’s paddle keeps getting caught underneath the canoe and it almost gets swallowed overboard three times (Ashton stifles a laugh each time).

It turns out that, in the time it took Luke and Ashton to get the canoe going, Pengey’s drifted off to a tight corner enclosed by branches and shrubbery. The sky is painted orange with pink streaks and the sun is setting and they should be eating fucking dinner with the rest of camp,but instead they’re trying to save a stuffed animal and Ashton can find so many things wrong with that.

But this is Luke, he reminds himself. These are the kinds of things he stresses over, and it fills Ashton with a weird feeling of happiness.

Plus, like, they can’t just leave Pengey in the lake. That’s unethical, for god’s sake.

Once they get up to the corner Pengey’s stuck in, they lodge the canoe in as far as possible until the front and back of the boat hits the edges of the corner, stopping them from going any further.

“Okay,” Luke says, crawling to the middle of the canoe, “I got this.” Pengey looks a little pathetic, floating on the surface of the water helplessly. Luke uses one hand — still covered in purple dye, mind you — to brace himself on the edge of the canoe, and the other hand to extend out for Pengey. “I don’t got this,” he corrects himself. Luke finds Pengey to be just inches out of his reach and he rises to his feet slowly, half-standing, to get a bit closer.

“Luke, be careful,” Ashton says, and what he really means to say is: ‘Luke, don’t fucking tip the canoe’, but he restrains himself this time.

Luke turns his head to Ashton. “Wait, how do you know my name?” is the last thing he says before the canoe wobbles and Ashton chokes out a strangled “oh my god” before they go plunging into the water.

The water is foggy and alarmingly cold, Ashton discovers, and if he wasn’t awake earlier then he definitely is now. It’s a snap of bitter ice, sending shivers through his body until he manages to get his head back up. And his clothes definitely aren’t helping, only weighing him down.

“I told you!” Ashton says once he resurfaces, spitting out water with his arms clinging onto the flipped-over canoe. “I knew this was gonna happen.” He’s surprised to find his bandana still tied around his head, flattening his hair down and covering his eyes. He drops his head to rest on the bottom of the canoe and waits for Luke to swim back with Pengey.

Luke grabs on next to Ashton and throws Pengey onto the bottom of the canoe. His hair is plastered down and he’s trying to catch his breath when he asks again, “How do you know my name?”

“Are we just going to pretend you didn’t tip the canoe over?”

“Yes,” Luke answers. “How do you know my name?”

“Shouldn’t we flip the canoe over? Get down to dinner?”

Luke doesn’t respond this time, simply raises his eyebrows.

Ashton falters for a moment, focusing his eyes on the paddle floating a few feet away. He should probably go get that.

He can feel Luke’s eyes burning into the side of his head and he can hear him breathing heavily next to him, their elbows lightly brushing against each other’s. “Olaf told me,” he finally answers.

“Fuck, of course he did,” Luke mumbles, and Ashton turns to him with a shocked laugh.  “Then what’s your name?” Luke asks. “It’s only fair.”

“Ashton,” he says.

“I don’t believe you,” Luke says, and Ashton scoffs. “That’s a girl name.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Ashton retorts. “Maybe I’ll just call you Lucy.”

“Or you could call me Nemo,” Luke laughs, and it’s a soft, genuine laugh that makes Ashton smile. He wants to trap it in a jar and send it around the world for everyone to hear because he’s pretty sure it could start a revolution or something. “Is your name really Ashton?” Luke asks. “You look more like a Jamie or something.”

Ashton rolls his eyes and holds his right hand out to Luke. “Hi, Luke. I’m Ashton.”

Luke eyes flicker down to Ashton’s hand and then he twists his own arm around to shake it. “Hello, Ashton. I’m Luke.” Their hands are both cold and slippery and it’s an awkward handshake but it makes both of them laugh quietly when they let go.

“Took us two days to finally have a proper introduction,” Ashton says.

“Took us two days to flip over a canoe,” Luke supplies.

“With all due respect, this is your fault.”

Luke takes a hand off the bottom of the canoe and uses it to shove Ashton away, who loses his grip and falls back underneath the surface. Luke rests there for a moment, waiting for Ashton to come back up, and is showered in a giant splash of water when he does.

“I was only being honest,” Ashton counters with a giggle, pushing Luke in return. Except Luke expects it this time, and instead of dipping underwater like Ashton did, he’s got his grip tight on the canoe and smirks at Ashton’s failed attempt.

The sun is slanting golden rays of light through the tall trees of the forest, wrapping around the lake. There are fireflies and bugs skittering across the lake, and the stillness of the water is peaceful.

Luke reaches over and takes Pengey off of the canoe. “Help me flip this over.”


	3. the first time he realizes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention next week's update might be a few days late!! i still plan on updating, it's just that i'm going on vacation and won't be back until monday and i'd rather post it when i'm home :-)

Everyone wakes up the next morning with an edgy mood. The camp was drowned by rain last night and, in fact, is still being drowned by rain, therefore canceling Calum, Luke, Ashton, and Michael’s plans of spending the three-hour block of free time in the afternoon at the swimming pool.

Ashton spends his morning shift in the rec room, safe in the shelter, protected from the rain. Some counselors are forced to spend their shifts outside as their schedules were decided in advance, and Michael and Calum look fucking miserable after breakfast when they trudge off together to go help with fishing down at the lake. Which — yeah, it does kind of suck. It’s not like anyone’s going fishing, anyway.

The rec room, a gymnasium filled with various activities, is noticeably crowded. Due to the unexpected, miserable weather conditions outside, it’s practically the only option the campers have. With foosball and air-hockey tables off to the side, Ashton still doesn’t think it’s safe for a game of basketball to be going on in the middle. He has fond memories of being hit in the head with one when he was twelve and simply wanted to beat Michael in a game of foosball. He lost that game of foosball, and swore on his life that it was because he “lost a few brain cells” when he got hit in the head, making the game essentially unfair.

Upon noticing that all the smaller games are jam-packed with campers, Ashton decides he’ll just take a seat on the bleachers and watch the game of basketball. Anyway, as a counselor, it’s his duty to watch over the place and make sure everyone’s safe. He still doesn’t think basketball’s safe. He never will think basketball’s safe.

He’s just taken a seat off to the side of the lowest bleachers when he catches Luke across the room. Luke beams a bright smile as soon as they lock eyes and Ashton rolls his eyes sarcastically, just to dig under Luke’s skin a bit.

Luke completely abandons the game of foosball he was watching and begins making his way over, walking around the court. Ashton still pretends to not care, his eyes locked on the basketball game. He feels a dip in the bench when Luke sits next to him, but Ashton still doesn’t say anything.

“Are you being boring again?” is the first thing Luke says. Ashton shoves him and Luke goes falling over with a clattering sound, getting tangled up in his long legs. Ashton considers helping him back up. _Considers_.

“Are you being a judgmental prick again?” Ashton asks, hoping that no one except for Luke can hear him. He assumes the shouting from the basketball game, echoing off the walls, should mask his voice up enough for him to swear.

Luke clambers back up next to Ashton. “I was gonna ask you if you wanted to play air-hockey,” he says, scowling for a moment before his expression suddenly softens with realization. “Oh, are you grumpy again?” Luke asks. “Do you need Pengey? Because Pengey’s still drying off….”

“What — no, no!” Ashton swears that stuffed animal is going to be the death of him. “I’m twenty years old!”

“Really?” Luke says, looking genuinely surprised and slightly in awe. “You’re old.”

“Thanks. I try my best.”

“No, just —” Luke’s smiling now, Ashton’s face spelling out some sort of confused expression in return. “You’re so short,” Luke giggles quietly; Ashton shoves him over again and refrains from saying ‘not as short as your dick’ because, honestly, he kind of hopes Luke has a big dick. Fortunately there’s a filter between Ashton’s thoughts and his mouth and he manages to keep his hopes to himself.

When Luke sits back up this time, he’s pouting. “Stop doing that,” he whines.

Ashton smiles brightly in response. “But it’s fun,” he says. “Speaking of fun, do you have your phone on you?”

Luke glares at him. “We’re not supposed to use it unless it’s an emergency or if we need reminders. God, didn’t you pay attention in training?”

No, Ashton didn’t really pay attention in training. Neither did Calum or Michael, for the record.

“I just want to check something,” Ashton says, but Luke’s expression still remains bothered. “ _Please_ ,” Ashton tacks on. Even though they’ve far outgrown the rule of “saying the magic word”, he knows that Luke would give in easily — and he’s right.

Luke lets out a groan and pulls the phone out of his back pocket. He flips the black iPhone over in his hands a few times, as if he’s deciding whether Ashton’s worthy of it or not.

However, Ashton decides for him when he quickly swipes it out of Luke’s hands, Luke barely letting out an irritated “hey” before he can stop him.

“You don’t have a passcode on this?” Ashton asks, swiping the screen to unlock it. His lock screen is the Sleeping With Sirens logo and, damn, maybe he at least has a decent music taste, besides the Nickelback and all that. Ashton taps the music icon to check.

“Usually it doesn’t get stolen,” Luke says with annoyance, trying to pull it out of Ashton’s grasp and failing when Ashton swats his hand away. Ashton holds the phone over to the side, just barely out of Luke’s reach. “What are you doing?”

Ashton suddenly wonders what would happen if he deleted all of Luke’s Nickelback songs; maybe they would have a decent alarm clock for once. He’s about to answer Luke’s question with a lie, but then he catches the head counselor walking over and quickly tosses the phone back into Luke’s lap, cursing quietly. Unfortunately Luke doesn’t get the memo in time, holding up the phone in confusion.

And that’s how, instead of watching over the kids in the rec room, they end up stuck in the mens’ dining hall restroom, trying to figure out how to replace toilet paper rolls.

(“This is your fault,” Luke had insisted as he struggled to close the lid on the paper towel dispenser.

“You’re the one with the phone,” Ashton had retorted.)

◊

In the meantime, Luke and Ashton have come up with an indirectly fun game to play during their meals. They never sit at the same table (because really, Ashton’s pretty sure they’re not supposed to, even though Luke doesn’t believe him) so instead they choose tables lined directly across from each other. And then it begins.

It’s not technically a game, really. It’s more of a bad habitat the two of them seem to share in common. Ashton takes a breadstick from the basket being passed around his table and naturally finds himself looking up in Luke’s direction — though, in his defense, Luke is pretty attractive, so.

Next time, Ashton’s busy reminding some kids to keep their elbows off the table when his eyes somehow wander over and end up locked with Luke’s. It’s not his fault; he swears it’s not his fault.

And then Ashton’s reading a sign on the wall behind Luke when all of a sudden his eyes aren’t on the sign anymore.

And Ashton would probably get away with the staring, too, if it wasn’t for the fact that every time he looked up, he would catch Luke returning the look. It goes on like that for every 45-minute meal and they don’t talk about it afterwards. 

Sometimes Ashton can’t believe this is a thing that’s actually happening. He’s spending his week at camp gawking over the hot counselor like a twelve-year-old girl and he finds no shame in it.

Today during lunch, Ashton finds himself having a serious conversation about Legos with one of Calum’s campers. It’s a really captivating topic for him, particularly when the kid brings up the Lego Movie and Ashton wants to burst from excitement (but he doesn’t because he’s twenty years old and _goddamn it_ , he knows how to control himself). However, when Ashton looks up this time to commence the Staring Game, he suddenly notices that Luke’s seat is empty.

That’s fine. Of course it’s fine. It’s just, like. Weird?

Ashton dives back into his deep discussion about Legos while he pokes the broccoli on his plate with a fork. He’s never going to eat it, so he decides to just spread it out across his plate so it looks like it’s disappearing.

Ten minutes have passed. Ashton glances over at Luke’s table again and he’s still not there.

Finally, when everyone begins cleaning their tables and stacking up their plates, Ashton looks over again. Luke’s still missing and his campers are doing the dishes for him and Ashton’s starting to get confused (and maybe a little bit worried) now.

Everyone leaves the dining hall enthusiastically (though the sky above is still pelting rain down) because free time has just begun. Ashton pulls Michael off to the side of the stampede of children before he can exit the building.

“Have you seen Nemo?”

Michael thinks for a second, the annoyance on his face slowly fading away. “Nope.” Ashton’s about to say some more when Michael interrupts him. “Listen, Copper and I are heading down to the archery range and you should join us. It’s under cover.”

“He agreed to let you go near sharp objects?” Ashton asks disbelievingly, and Michael kicks his foot in return. “I’m heading up to my cabin first, but sure,” Ashton says. “As long as you promise not to impale anyone.”

“I promise not to impale anyone that’s not you.”

Ashton smiles sarcastically in return and uses his hand to smack Michael on the back of his head.

When Ashton’s back in his cabin, he digs around in his suitcase for a light jacket. It’s a little weird being in the cabin without Luke, and Ashton suddenly realizes how much time they spend together. They’re barely ever not together, and perhaps that’s a little weird?

He decides to make his way over to the bathroom before heading down with Michael and Calum. The rain is starting to get irritating at this point, dampening everyone’s summer joy. The dirt on the ground begins turning into sloppy mud and Ashton hates that his new Vans are being ruined by it.

The door of the bathroom squeaks when he pushes it open, and he’s a little taken aback when he sees Luke in there, sitting on the floor and not moving.

“Hey, you okay?” Ashton asks, looking down at Luke. It takes Luke a few seconds to reply, as if he’s temporarily forgotten where he is. His usually-perfect hair is ruffled up and his face is noticeably paler than usual.

“I’ve been throwing up my guts for the last…” Luke pauses, thinking, “half an hour.”

Luke’s sitting against the wall opposite the cubicles, looking pale and deathly and like the life was sucked out of him. Ashton doesn’t even know what he’s doing when he walks over to Luke and takes a seat on the floor next to him. He completely abandons his original task without even realizing it.

The bathroom is lingered with the intoxicating smell of cleaning products and the stone walls surrounding the room are scrawled with inappropriate messages. It’s not high school but it definitely looks like a high school bathroom.

“You look cold,” Ashton comments. “Here.” He shrugs off the jacket he recently put on and hands it over to Luke. It’s a gray hoodie with black sleeves and white drawstrings and Luke stares down at it emotionlessly.

“I’m fine,” he says, trying to push it away. Ashton holds the hoodie out closer to him, scrunched up in his hands, and Luke sighs before finally taking it and zipping it on. Ashton can’t help but notice Luke’s arms shaking when he moves and it makes Ashton feel a pinch of anger at the bottom of his stomach. Why is he angry? Who is he even angry at?

He wants to hug Luke and hold him close and make him feel better and he _doesn’t know why_. He’s known Luke for three days now, yet he feels like he’s known him his entire life.

“Is that why you left in the middle of lunch?” Ashton asks, and then he internally cringes at his words when he realizes he sounds creepy. He’s not supposed to notice things like that.

“Yeah, wasn’t feeling good,” Luke mumbles. He pulls the hood up and drops his head down so it’s resting against Ashton’s shoulder. “This hoodie’s really soft,” Luke comments quietly. “Is it new?”

“Yeah,” Ashton answers. “Got it last week.”

“Then why are you letting me ruin it?” Luke asks, and Ashton giggles.

“You’re not ruining it,” Ashton says, and Luke doesn't say anything. “You don’t ruin anything.”

Suddenly Ashton looks up when he hears the door open slightly and the sound of the rain pouring outside becomes momentarily louder and closer. He sees Michael and Calum poking their heads in through the doorway.

“There you are,” Michael says, forcing the door open a little wider. “You guys not coming down to archery?” Michael asks slowly, narrowing his eyes at the two of them like he just caught them kissing or something.

“I think I’m staying with Nemo,” Ashton says, and Calum lets out a snort.

“Are you two, like, in love or something?” Calum blurts out, and Michael laughs, the sound echoing across the walls loudly and forcing Luke to glare back at him.

“Shut _up,_ ” Ashton says. He can feel Luke tensing up next to him, though he makes no effort to scoot away from Ashton. “Nemo was feeling sick and I’m not just going to leave him.”

“Right,” Michael says, his tone dripping sarcasm. Ashton wants to get up and kick him in the lower region, but he also doesn’t want to leave Luke. “Well, we’ll leave you to it! Keep things rated G. Have fun throwing up on each other.”

Ashton’s about to shoot back an annoyed remark, but they’ve already left and the door’s already shut, muffling the sound of the rain once again.

“’m tired,” Luke whispers, completely ignoring what Calum and Michael have just said, as if they were never in the room. “But I can’t sleep. This hoodie’s soft. I already said that, didn’t I?” Ashton nods. “Oh. Well. It’s really soft and I like it. You should let me wear it more often.”

Ashton feels the words getting strangled in his throat and he opens and closes his mouth a few times before settling with a simple: “Yeah.”

 _Yeah_. He’d love to see Luke wearing his hoodie more often.

“You know,” Luke says, “you didn’t have to stay with me. You should’ve gone with Copper and Olaf. It’s not fair.” Luke’s words are quiet, barely audible over the sound of the rain outside whipping the upper windows.

“How is it not fair?” Ashton asks. He looks down at Luke, whose eyes look weak under the fluorescent lights, the hood of the jacket casting faded shadows over his face.

“You could be doing something fun instead,” Luke answers. “You could be, like, shooting hay bales and stuff like that. That’s fun. Why are you staying with me?”

Ashton thinks for a moment. Luke’s made a good point. Why _is_ he staying with Luke?

“This is fun,” Ashton says, and he feels Luke twisting his head up to look at Ashton, still leaning against him.

“Liar,” Luke whispers.

Ashton simply nods. “Yeah, so what? Maybe I am.” Luke lets a small smile spread over his face and Ashton feels a small sense of pride knowing that he can still make Luke smile.

They talk for a while, Luke’s voice becoming weaker and his eyes drifting off as time passes. They talk about their family and their friends back home, about how much they mutually hate the head counselor, and about their favorite campfire skits. Ashton asks him how he’s feeling, asks him why they can’t go back to the cabin. Luke says that he’s too sick to leave the bathroom; that he’ll only end up coming back. And Ashton believes him, especially when Luke (weakly) crawls away and throws open one of the bathroom stalls so he can hunch over the toilet to throw up.

It makes Ashton feel sick himself. Seeing Luke ill makes his insides curl up and makes him feel downright awful.

So Ashton climbs in next to him, the walls of the tiny bathroom stall closing in on them. He rubs circles on Luke’s back to make him feel better — a trick he learned from his mom — and makes sure to catch Luke before he can collapse to the ground.

“What did you eat?” Ashton asks after the third time, laughing slightly in hopes of lightening the mood. They’re sitting up against the sides of the bathroom stall — or, Ashton’s sitting up and Luke’s collapsed onto him.

“Grabbed the wrong dish of mashed potatoes,” Luke groans, pulling the hood of his jacket — Ashton’s jacket back on. The rain outside is getting louder.

“Shouldn’t everyone at your table be sick, too?”

“None of them wanted to eat it,” Luke answers. “They were smart. Smart little twelve-year-olds. Smarter than me.”

A few hours have passed. It takes quite an effort for Ashton to get both of them back out of the stall. Luke’s only becoming weaker, though Ashton thinks it’s probably because he’s losing energy.

Ashton helps Luke crawl over to the wall and can see the physical pain in his eyes every time he moves. It makes him feel like he’s being stabbed with a hundred knives, seeing someone feel so bad.

Ashton has a weird image of Luke in his mind — like Luke’s a fragile person that only accepts what he’s given and breaks easily with the wrong touch. And it’s not entirely untrue, really. Luke always pays attention, always listens, and always tries his best to follow the rules. He doesn’t deserve to have all the energy stolen from him.

But, then again, eating the mashed potatoes was kind of his choice.

Ashton throws his arm around Luke’s shoulders, hugging him closer, and Luke accepts the touch and buries himself against Ashton’s side. Ashton can tell that Luke’s cold, even with the jacket on and the door of the bathroom tightly shut. He lets Luke bury his head into his neck and lets Luke lean against him. Ashton isn’t sure when Luke falls asleep, he just knows that Luke’s in the middle of complaining about a headache when suddenly his breathing becomes slow and even and his eyes fall shut.

Luke looks tiny and vulnerable, even when he’s not. He’s six feet tall. He’s definitely not tiny.

But when he’s fast asleep and curled up next to Ashton like a koala bear, he looks small. He looks frail and peaceful. Ashton doesn’t move, doesn’t want to wake him up. So he sits there with his arm wrapped around him and uses his thumb to trace tiny circles on Luke’s shoulder.

And the weird thing is that Ashton doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind spending his free time cuddled next to a sick person he barely knows. He doesn’t mind dropping everything so he can make someone feel better. He doesn’t mind wasting hours on end to make sure someone’s okay, because it’s not really “wasting” when he spends them with Luke.

Ashton thinks that’s the first time he realizes that he might be a tiny, little bit in love.

◊

Luke wakes up on his own a few minutes before dinner, still cuddled up next to Ashton. The rain’s stopped and Luke looks a little more refreshed after his nap.

“Have you been here the whole time?” Luke asks. He tilts his head up so that it rubs against Ashton’s shoulder, startling him.

“Oh — yeah,” he admits. “The rain was really coming down so it wasn’t like I could leave.” It’s a shitty excuse, really.

Ashton gets up first and then offers a hand to help Luke, too. This time, during their meal, they’re both present and they continue their Staring Game. Ashton notices Luke having trouble eating, forcing down a few bites of food he doesn’t want to eat, still wearing Ashton’s hoodie. A weird, protective feeling washes over Ashton and, yet again, he’s completely left in the dark as to why he even gives a damn.

It’s also at dinner when they learn that their cabin has completely bombed today’s cabin inspection.

There are announcements at every meal, provided by the head counselor, and cabin inspections are always read aloud at dinner. There’s cheering, there’s arguing, and there’s mocking laughter. Luke and Ashton’s group receive the latter.

According to the head counselor, there were messy clothes lying all around, hanging from bedposts and crammed in corners. There were, apparently, unmade bunks, and a dirty sock hanging from one of the lights. Ashton has no recollection of their cabin being such a mess and he’s about to protest whether or not the head counselor mixed theirs up with someone else’s, but topics have already been switched. Instead, he exchanges a scowl with Luke.

So as soon as dinner’s over, they decide to fix their problem. They wait until all of their campers are accounted for, all gathered up in the cabin and waiting for their tasks, before they start figuring out what’s wrong.

It turns out the head counselor was right about there being a filthy sock dangling from a light. Luke manages to get it back down to safety before Ashton announces a new tactic.

“Bribery,” he says. There’re a few seconds of silence while the kids wait for Ashton to elaborate. “I planned this out long before camp even started.” He heads over to his bunk, shuffles through some blankets, and returns with a clear plastic bag filled with gummy bears. Luke snorts and a few of the kids make grabby hands for it. “Nonono,” Ashton says, holding the bag up, out of their reach. “This is only for emergency purposes.”

“I’m hungry, that’s an emergency,” one of Luke’s campers declares.

“And your bunk looks like something died in there,” Ashton tells the kid, earning some scattered laughter. The camper shrugs in agreement. “First we need to make sure this place looks, at most, presentable. Then, if we have time left over, we’ll talk about the treats. Okay?” The kids nod enthusiastically, though most of their focus still seems to be trained on the candy. Ashton’s not even sure if they’re listening, but he figures the candy should be encouraging enough. “Stuff your dirty clothes somewhere the head counselor won’t be able to find them — like your suitcase, for example. Make sure your sleeping bags are zipped up in the morning before you leave and line your shoes up in the box Nemo and I set up by the door. Then we’ll talk about candy tactics.” The kids head off obediently, a few of them shooting lingering glances at the gummy bears before leaving.

The kids scatter out to their respective bunks, zipping up their sleeping bags and kicking their suitcases under their bunks. They line up their shoes in the box by the wall and Josh even begins sweeping the floor (Ashton thinks it must’ve been a big commitment for him to finally put his Harry Potter book down).

“You’ve had gummy bears this whole time?” Luke asks, leaning against Ashton’s bunk, watching him stuff dirty clothes into his bag. He looks offended by this, like he was entitled to know and had only been lied to.

Ashton can’t even get his bag to zip shut at this point, and he figures that as long as he shoves it under his bunk and out of plain sight that he might be able to get away with it.

“Don’t judge,” Ashton says. “You never know when they might come in useful. For example, they’re quite useful right now. I’m clever.”

“Yeah, sure,” Luke says offhandedly. “Only if you let me have a few.”

Ashton hums thoughtfully and then shakes his head. “Your bunk’s a mess,” he counters, pointing at it. “You need to be a good role model first. Then I’ll consider.”

Luke turns to look over at his own bunk and, agreeably, it could probably look better. His blue sleeping bag is half-twisted over itself and there are clothes spilling out of his bag and onto the floor.

“In fact,” Ashton says, forcing his suitcase under his bunk, “you’re probably the reason Copper and Olaf got the golden plunger and we didn’t.”

Luke looks personally offended. “You would be lost without me, you know? So lost.”

Once everyone manages to straighten out the cabin, they meet again in the middle to discuss what actions need to be taken with the candy, like it’s a battle strategy. Cabin inspection is a war and they’re losing. To Michael and Calum, of all people.

“I say we should eat it all,” Tanner suggests, and the other boys agree (including Luke, who Ashton elbows in turn).

“Everyone can have _one_ ,” Ashton says, holding out the bag for the kids to clamber into. The children stampede forward, short arms reaching over each other and into the bag. “But we have to save the rest for the head counselor in the morning. Got that?”

There’s a scattered murmur of ‘got that’s and then the kids are taking off, devouring their candy.

“Can I have two?” Luke asks nervously, reaching a hand into the bag once all the kids have dispersed. “Pengey wants one.”

Ashton frowns. “Of course you can’t.”

Luke pouts but still grabs another one anyway, despite Ashton’s annoying protests.

◊

The next morning, before heading off for breakfast, Ashton scrawls a short, cheesy message to the head counselor in his notebook, rips it out from its spiral, and hands it off to the kids. They circle up in the middle of the cabin, arranging the note and the candy in (what hopefully will be considered) an aesthetically pleasing pattern on the floor. The gummy bears are arranged in alternating color sequences, bordering the words on the paper like a picture frame.

“You know, our cabin looks pretty good,” Ashton declares.

“I look pretty good,” Luke says.

Ashton almost agrees out loud, but stops himself quickly.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> F L U F F  
> S Q U A D


	4. the golden plunger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so i lied it's been WAY more than a few days and i am SO SO SO sorry but like I was out of town and I'm hurriedly uploading this at midnight bc I won't get a chance to upload it tomorrow and yeah this is just a giant apology ily <3

Ashton ends up being forced to share a table with Calum at breakfast, since Calum and his campers came down a few minutes late, limiting their seating choices. He claims there was a “mishap” in his cabin, and that’s all the explanation Ashton receives. Calum is ridiculously, unnaturally hyper at this time in the morning, and once he finishes the waffles on his own plate, he picks up his fork and, without hesitation, leans over Ashton’s arm to stab one of his. Ashton slides his plate away quickly, but unfortunately a little too late.

“Get your own, mate!” Ashton whines.

Calum chews with a smug grin. “Not like you’re gonna eat what’s on your plate, though, are you?” he says. “You’re too busy staring at Luke like you want to have him for breakfast instead.” He points his fork in the direction of where Luke’s seated, and Ashton reaches over and shoves his fork back down before anyone can question it.

Well, fuck. Calum’s not supposed to notice that. He’s not supposed to notice the stares they exchange — it’s supposed to be their little secret. Luke and Ashton are living in their own little bubble and Calum’s excluded from it.

“Don’t use his real name. And ’m not staring at anyone,” Ashton insists, swatting Calum’s arm away as he tries to steal another waffle. “I’ll be staring at your dead body if you keep this up.”

“Such a _role model_ , you are,” Calum says. “Threatening to kill your best friend.”

“You’re stealing my food!” Ashton protests, mild annoyance in his tone. “And you robbed our cabin of the golden plunger when we so clearly deserved it. Where’s Kanye when you need him?”

“Not at summer camp, I can promise you that.” Calum reaches over this time and steals a grape instead, leaving a very frustrated Ashton scowling at him.

Calum ends up eating most of what’s on Ashton’s plate for him, and stifles a laugh every time Ashton so much as _glances_ in Luke’s direction.

“What’s it to ya?” Ashton asks after the fifteenth time Calum laughs at him.

“Nothing. Quite amusing, if I’m honest.” Calum’s stacking up the empty plates at their table while Ashton busies himself with collecting the cups.

“Amusing?” Ashton repeats with confusion. “He’s my friend.”

“ _Friend_ ,” Calum hums with a smug grin. Ashton would very much like to punch it off his face.

After breakfast, Ashton finds himself playing red rover in the rec field with Michael and a group of children he doesn’t know. Red rover’s actually quite a dangerous game, with the whole possibility of breaking limbs and all that.

And it turns out that some of the kids are inhumanely strong. When a small, scrawny boy ends up breaking the link Michael and Ashton are holding with their hands, Ashton’s arm ends up feeling like it is halfway ripped out of his shoulder, and he decides to take a break.

(“Weak, Pascal. You are weak!” Michael had insisted.)

Ashton sits on the grass off to the side of the field, letting the late morning sun beat over him. There are a few other campers seated out as well, connecting their daisy chains together. Ashton fiddles with his shoelace and rolls his shoulder back and forth a few times to hopefully help his arm recover faster.   

Daisy chains are actually quite an interesting craft, and Ashton can’t really be blamed if he decides to start making some himself. He scoots closer to the girls and asks them to show him how to do them. His unfortunately large hands make it a bit of a challenge for him to tie the knots, but once he gets the hang of it he can’t really stop himself. It’s entertaining, okay?

He’s already made two bracelets and is caught up linking another one together when he feels something bounce sharply off of his back and turns around to see Calum and Luke snickering down at him. Luke’s holding a cardboard box, his blond hair pushed back underneath a gray beanie, and Calum seems to be living up to his reputation of being useless. Unless, of course, you count chucking rocks at people as being useful. Then he’s pretty damn useful.

“Daisy chains?” Calum asks, raising an eyebrow. Ashton suddenly remembers the string of flowers he’s holding in his hand and quickly dumps them on the ground. “With the girls? Summer camp really brings out your true feminine side.”

Calum’s laughing by himself this time; Luke’s preoccupied himself by staring at Ashton, who pretends to not notice. But the mocking words coming from Calum are flowing in one ear and out of the other when he realizes that Luke looks really fucking good with his hair pushed back under a beanie.

When Michael shouts something at Calum from the middle of the field, Ashton doesn’t hear it. He instead ends up with his eyes trained on Luke’s legs because — _wow_ — he’s wearing basketball shorts that show them off really well and, sitting down in the grass, Ashton only suddenly begins to realize how long and unappreciated Luke’s legs are. He’d love to be between —

“Hey, Pascal!” Michael raises his voice at just the right amount of decibels required to snap Ashton away from the Luke’s Legs Appreciation Show that was going on in his head. It was a good show for the ten seconds that it lasted.

“What?” Ashton groans, turning his head back around to see Michael walking over to him. He’s breathing harder than he should be and it’s obvious that Michael’s fairly out of shape, primarily because he spends most of his days hidden in the darkest room of his house with a game of Call of Duty. The sudden athleticism must come as a shock to his body.

The girls that were sitting making daisy chains suddenly jump up and sprint over to the middle of the field upon noticing the boys are starting a game of Ninja without them. A few of them shout about how that’s not fair for the boys to exclude them, and Michael turns around briefly to tell the boys to not be mean, and then turns back to his three friends.

“Copper’s joining in our game of red rover, okay?” Michael says, reaching a hand back to adjust his snapback. “Or — _my_ game, really, since you chickened out. And maybe it’s not red rover anymore,” he adds in, gesturing to the campers behind him.

“What — what about Nemo?” Ashton asks. Calum crosses his arms and lets out a snort; Ashton shoots up a brief glare at him.

“Uh… you wanna join him?” Michael offers slowly, exchanging a lookwith Calum and smiling a little, obviously trying to force back a laugh. “We’ll do a little buddy rotation thing. Copper and I will stick with the kids and you and Nemo can go make out in the kitchen or wherever he’s headed.”

Ashton aims a kick at Michael’s shin (and mentally congratulates himself when he actually hits it and Michael backs away) and forces himself off the grass, moving over to stand next to Luke.

“Fine, I’ll go with Nemo because I’m not a _dick_ ,” Ashton says.

“My ears,” Michael whines, pretending to wince. “What was that thing the head counselor kept telling us about? Something along the lines of _not swearing?_ ”

Ashton decides not to kick Michael in the shin twice, so he just does it mentally.

Calum and Michael head off into the middle of the field with the kids, and Luke and Ashton spend a few seconds in silence staring at each other like two surprised fish.

“Uh — do you want me to take that?” Ashton finally asks, pointing at the box Luke is holding. Luke startles from his trance, and looks down at the box in his hands as if he’d forgotten about it. He then looks back up at Ashton blankly, opening and closing his mouth a few times with no words coming out. Ashton frowns and leans over to take the box from him. “Okay,” he says, stretching out the last syllable. “Where are we headed?”

The box is surprisingly light, appearing to be filled with unorganized DVDs and a tangle of cables and wires.

“Umm. The, uh. Indoor theater,” Luke finally says, pointing in the general direction. “They’re showing some movies tomorrow during free time.”

They can hear the game of red rover being continued on behind them as they leave the rec field behind and set foot on the gravel path weaving through camp. The tall evergreen trees blanket the path in calming shadows, a nice refresher to the scorching weather.

“You look good today,” Ashton blurts out.

Luke reaches his hands up to fiddle with his beanie in an effort to busy himself. “Uh — thanks,” he says blushingly. “You look good every day.” Ashton almost trips and drops the box. He isn’t sure if Luke’s flirting with him or just messing around, and it irritates him to no end. “What was that thing Olaf said back there about making out?” Luke asks sheepishly.

“Oh, yeah. Um. He thinks of stupid things really quickly and there’s no filter from his brain to his mouth, so, yeah.” Ashton feels his face heating up and refuses to make eye contact with Luke. “We’re not making out.”

“What a letdown.” Luke sighs.

“Unless — unless you want to?” Ashton offers. He coughs nervously and sighs in relief when they turn the corner and see the indoor theater just at the top of the hill: a one-story building tucked beneath the trees.

“I’m kidding,” Luke laughs, though Ashton swears that he can see Luke blushing a bit.

“Good,” Ashton says. “Or — well, yeah.” He fucking hates himself sometimes.

“Or?” Luke asks.

Ashton nervously clears his throat and shrugs. “Nothing.”

“So…” Luke says. The unnaturally warm summer air definitely isn’t helping Ashton fight down that blush on his face. He doesn’t want the conversation to be awkward between them, but it’s already fallen off that cliff. “You got a girlfriend?” Luke asks.

“You wanna be my girlfriend?” Ashton responds teasingly. Luke lets out a strange giggle and brings his hand up to cover his mouth quickly. It’s kinda cute. “It’d be odd for me to have a girlfriend considering the fact that I don’t even like girls,” Ashton says seriously.

Luke responds with a simple “oh” and they walk on a bit longer in silence. “You got a boyfriend?” Luke finally says once they’ve turned the corner. Ashton simply shakes his head. They spend the rest of the walk in silence (though it’s only a few more steps until they’re actually in the theater, so it’s not that long).

The indoor theater is well-kept, opening up to a long hall with doors lining either side. It’s ominously silent when they walk in; the only sound accompanying them is the click of the door shutting behind them.

“Perfect place for a murder,” Luke whispers.

“That could mean two things,” Ashton says, setting the box on the floor for a moment. “One: we’re getting killed. Or two: _you’re_ doing the killing?”

Luke doesn’t say anything, simply reaches down and picks up the box once again before heading down the corridor with Ashton following behind.

“What does that mean?” Ashton asks with a laugh, trying to catch up.

“It means you better count your blessings, Ashton Irwin.”

Ashton jumps in front of him for a second, stopping him in his tracks. “Hold up.” They’re standing very close — not that Ashton minds. He takes that brief moment to appreciate how pretty Luke’s eyes are, a calming shade of blue. He appreciates how soft his lips look and how he really, _really_ wants to taste them.

But he gulps, hopes Luke doesn’t notice the way his eyes flickered down to his mouth, and goes back to his original statement. “You thought it was weird that I knew your first name, but you know my last name and that doesn’t come off as creepy to you?”

“I guessed,” Luke supplies, though the mischievous grin on his face says otherwise. He maneuvers his way around Ashton, who simply narrows his eyes at him, as he walks down a bit and pushes open a door marked with the number 103.

“You’re a shit, you know that?” Ashton says, following behind Luke and into the room. It’s a small carpeted room with a projector seated on a cart in the middle with rows of cheap metal seats lined around it. The lack of windows makes the room entirely dark until Ashton flips on the switch and the fluorescent lights up above them turn on.

Luke drops the box right in front of the projector and looks over at Ashton, who’s staring at him from his spot by the door with confusion.

“You gonna help me?” Luke asks.

Ashton lets out a groan. “We have to set it up, too?”

“It’s not gonna set up itself,” Luke says, and Ashton lets out a protesting moan before walking over. They take a seat on the floor and Luke begins shuffling through the cords in the box, trying to separate them from the knot they’ve formed.

It takes them awhile to figure out which cable goes from the DVD player to the projector, and then it takes them another long period of time to figure out where the remote for the projector even is. Then they spend a few solid minutes arguing over which movie to test out, eventually compromising with Lady and the Tramp.

The weird thing is that Ashton doesn’t really mind not knowing what he’s doing as long as he’s doing it with Luke. Then he realizes how cheesy that sounds in his head and shoves that thought aside, picks up the empty box for Lady and the Tramp and begins reading the blurb on the back.

“You’re not very tech savvy,” Luke says while he stares at the blue screen in front of them, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Ashton and waiting to see if the DVD loads.

“Is that a question or a statement?” Ashton asks.

“Statement.”

“You’re rude,” Ashton says, using the Lady and the Tramp case to hit Luke in the arm.

“Is that a daisy chain on your wrist?” Luke asks, pointing at the tiny flowers. Ashton shoves the case back into the cardboard box with the other DVDs and lifts up his wrist in surprise; he almost forgot he’d made a bracelet and tied it on.

“I’m pretty proud of it, if I do say so myself,” Ashton beams. “Are you insulting it?”

Luke holds his hands up in the air to show that he’s innocent. “Complimenting it,” he corrects. “You’re gonna have to show me to how to make one of ’em later.”

“I have another one!” Ashton remembers, showing Luke his other wrist and the identical daisy chain bracelet on there. He reaches over and fiddles with the flowers to detach the bracelet from his wrist. Once he’s gotten it off, he reaches over for Luke’s free hand (that’s still slightly purple from the dye incident) and ties it around his wrist for him. “There you go,” Ashton says, securing the knot and smiling down at his creation.

Luke turns his wrist around and inspects it with awe. He then points to one of the flowers and says, “That one looks a little dried out.” Ashton frowns. “I’m kidding,” Luke covers with a smile, reaching an arm around Ashton’s shoulders to reassure him.

Orchestral music loudly fills the room and Ashton brings his hands up to his ears to plug them while Luke panics to find the volume knob on the speakers. So the movie works, surprisingly.

Luke turns the projector off after knowing the DVD player works, and begins folding up the flaps of the cardboard box. “Where should we put this for tomorrow?” he asks.

Ashton surveys the room from his spot on the floor. _Up your ass_ , Ashton wants to say. He figures their friendship probably isn’t at a stage that allows him to say that, however. “Just leave it by the projector so they can find it easily,” he says instead. “Can I tell you something?” Ashton asks suddenly. He wishes he knew what he was doing; it’s something he’s wanted to tell Luke for a while now. But is this really the time? Right now? Why is his brain doing this?

“Go ahead.”

“So, uh, someone told me they like you,” Ashton says nervously, and he can feel his brain going into overdrive mode. “Like, _like_ likes you.” What the fuck is he doing?

Luke turns to him with wide eyes and laughs a little. Ashton thinks Luke probably gets this all the time. With a face like that, he wouldn’t be surprised.

“Really?” Luke asks. “I haven’t talked to any girls ever since I got here. Who is it?”

Ashton bites his lip offhandedly and messes with the daisy chain around his wrist. Of course Luke would think it’s a girl — he’s straight, right?

“Can’t tell you that,” Ashton says, smiling a bit forcedly. “She wanted me to tell you to see what you’d say.”

“Oh. Well, it’s hard to say anything when I don’t know who she is,” Luke says, frowning a little. “At least give me a hint?”

Ashton shakes his head. “No hints.” He pushes himself off the floor to a standing position; Luke follows his actions. “She just wanted you to know that someone likes you.”

Luke hums quietly, focusing his gaze down on his shoes. “You should tell her to tell me herself.”

Ashton can feel his throat closing up and a bit of a headache coming on.

“I told her that, but she’s too — she’s too shy,” he says weakly, swallowing. He begins making his way over to the door and stands by the light switch while he waits for Luke to make his way out of the room. “Said she doesn’t think you like her back.”

That’s where the conversation ends, Luke nodding his head briskly in silence before stepping past him and into the hall.

Ashton wonders what Luke would say if he knew that that friend was him.

◊

Ashton’s group turns out to be pretty good at tug-of-war; apparently Dylan and Tanner are beasts when it comes to upper-body strength. The whole camp is gathered out in the rec field, the chatter filling the evening air, and half the groups have already been eliminated, lingering around the benches on the side while they wait for the tournament to reach its end.

Michael’s group was completely demolished by Luke’s, and Calum’s group was completely demolished by Ashton’s. When it’s announced that it’s time for Luke and Ashton’s campers to battle it out, Luke holds up a (still slightly purple) hand in protest.

“Okay, this is not fair,” he says, looking over at Ashton, but really just shouting out to whoever can hear him. “Pascal’s really muscular; he shouldn’t be allowed to help his campers.”

At first Ashton isn’t sure if he should be offended or flattered. Both, perhaps? Both.

There’s a shout from Michael about how that’s a coward’s excuse.

“I’m a chameleon,” Ashton tells Luke. “You’re saying a _chameleon_ is stronger than you?”

“I have a bad fin,” Luke says, as if that’s going to modify the rules of the game. Ashton snorts and instructs his campers to pick up their end of the rope. They follow orders, and Luke lets out a noise of annoyance before gathering his campers up in a huddle for some pep-talk. Though Ashton’s not really sure if it’s a pep-talk; it seems more like they’re just bashing his group, judging by the occasional glares he sees being sent his way. He moves his campers around strategically while he waits for Luke’s group to cut their shit together.

The whistle goes off and it’s like it’s not even a completion. Ashton’s group wins easily, celebrating with a tight hug in the end. After filing out to the side so the girls can begin their competitions, Calum high-fives each of Ashton’s campers as they go by — most likely just to piss Luke off.

Ashton watches the first few rounds of the girls’ tug-of-war before deciding to stay back with Michael, Calum, and Luke. Calum and Michael are sitting next to each other on the table of a picnic bench, whispering to each other about some female counselor they find to be attractive, and Ashton would join them if he wasn’t like, gay.

Instead, he passes them and decides to stand over next to Luke, who’s leaning against the table, fixing one of his camper’s broken sunglasses. The camper looks a little sad because ‘I only got them two weeks ago’ and Ashton watches Luke trying to pop the temple back on. When it clicks into place and Luke twists around to show his success with a grin on his face, the camper cheers triumphantly and takes them back.

“Now you can go back to having swag,” Luke says before screwing up his face in confusion at the realization of what he’s just said. “If you want, I guess.” The camper leaps away and Ashton laughs a little, moving closer to stand next to Luke.

“‘Swag’?” Ashton repeats. Luke looks a little startled to see Ashton there and sends a glare at him (though it’s not a very intimidating glare, in all honesty. Ashton doesn’t think Luke could be intimidating if his life depended on it).

“Something wrong, chameleon?”

“Am I supposed to be offended by that?” Ashton asks.

“You better hope so. If our cabin wins the golden plunger, my group won’t be sharing it with yours.”

Ashton winces. “That’s a little harsh,” he comments, receiving a shrug from Luke. “Poor sportsmanship as well, I might add.”

Luke turns to face him suddenly, and Ashton steps back a little too quickly when he realizes just how close they’re standing. “You know it’s not fair,” Luke says. “Look at your biceps!” There’s a hint of awe in Luke’s voice as he gestures to Ashton’s arms.

“Jealous?” Ashton asks, smirking a little. He lifts up an arm and flexes it proudly. Luke coughs, turns away nervously, and Ashton leans closer to him. “ _Jealous_?” Ashton repeats, forcing an answer out of him.

Luke, still looking straight ahead, mumbles a quiet, “Fuck off.”

“Bit young to be swearing,” Ashton comments. There’s something about Luke that’s so contradictory of his own personality that sets Ashton off. He likes hearing Luke swear, strangely enough. He’s trying to resist pouncing on Luke and instead settles for staring. Staring at Luke is fun. Ashton’s sure that if it was a subject in school, he would be acing it.

“Really?” Luke says. “I’m eighteen.” Ashton grumbles. “Which is legal, I should add.”

“You being legal is the last thing I needed to know,” Ashton says, his voice coming out a little shaky. Ashton’s lying to himself — he knows he’s lying to himself. But he also doesn’t know why Luke felt that information was necessary to disclose.

“Is it?” Luke asks, and Ashton wants to slap him for being such a cocky little shit.

It’s like there are two sides to Luke — the innocent one that cuddles stuffed penguins and sings campfire songs seriously as if he’s auditioning for a talent show, and the carefree one that knows exactly what to say in order to turn Ashton into a nervous wreck. Or perhaps he doesn’t _know_ that he’s turning him into a nervous wreck; perhaps he’s just being an asshole for the fun of it.

“I think me being legal matters to you quite a bit, don’t you?”

“Care to elaborate?”

“There are a lot of things I can do, since I’m legal,” Luke says slowly, choosing his words carefully and screwing up his face in a cute way while he does so, “a lot of things that I… wouldn’t be allowed to mention at camp.” Luke pauses and Ashton refuses to believe that Luke’s talking about what he thinks he’s talking about.

“No alcohol on camp grounds,” Ashton says. There’s no way Luke can be talking about sex, especially not to him, so of course Luke must be talking about getting wasted. Regardless, Ashton doesn’t think that Luke — barely legal Luke — is quite fulfilling his role of being the innocent one. And maybe that’s Ashton’s fault for thinking he was innocent in the first place.

“Wasn’t talking about alcohol,” Luke mumbles.

“What are — what?” Ashton can’t find the strength to finish his question because all of his attention suddenly seems to be narrowing in on what Luke’s just said — as well as his newfound knowledge of the idea that he could fuck Luke without there being a problem. “Sorry, _what_ did you say?”

Luke visibly gulps, his gaze switching between being locked on Ashton’s eyes and his lips. “Nothing, get your mind out of the gutter,” Luke counters, turning away quickly and staring out at the crowd gathered in front of them to watch the tug-of-war.

“Oh, _my_ mind’s in the gutter? Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Luke mutters quietly — so quietly that it blends in with the shouts of the campers around them and Ashton doesn’t catch it.

There’s a moment of silence between them and Michael, still seated on the table, nudges Luke and tells him something that’s out of Ashton’s hearing range.

Ashton doesn’t move away from Luke, simply stands next to him while the tournament continues out of their view. Luke’s words run through his mind like a crashing flood, and he’s trying to process what exactly Luke was trying to say. There’s no way Luke was flirting with him, but a part of Ashton thinks he might have been.

“You’ve gone silent,” Luke notes after a few minutes. Ashton looks over to see that Luke’s looking at him, waiting for an answer, and he bites his cheek tentatively, thinking about what to respond with.

“So have you,” he offers.

Luke doesn’t answer at first, simply smiles and nods. “I like you,” Luke finally blurts out, and Ashton hopes Luke doesn’t notice the way he tenses up.

“Thanks?” Ashton says. He mentally punches himself for that and suddenly has the dying wish to get run over by a truck. “I mean — well. Not _thanks_ but, like, thanks?” Luke raises his eyebrows and nods, clearly trying to bite back a shit-eating grin. “Like — yeah, me too. _No_.” Ashton squeezes his eyes shut with embarrassment. “Not ‘me too’. I mean… I like you, too.”

“Do you usually stutter?” Luke asks.

“No, I have no idea where this is coming from,” Ashton says honestly. “Sorry, I think.”

“Apology rejected.”

Ashton snorts. “Okay, now you’re just being mean,” Ashton declares, turning away from Luke with a pout. He crosses his arms like an upset toddler and waits for Luke to say something.

“Don’t be sad,” Luke whines, wrapping an arm around Ashton’s torso and jokingly burying his face against Ashton’s neck. Ashton tries to ignore the way Luke’s hand feels around his waist and the fact that the touch goes straight to his dick. “You have a cute face, don’t be sad.”

Ashton laughs and pushes Luke away. “Think you can flirt your way back to my heart?” he says.

“You still have a cute face,” Luke insists, reaching a finger up to poke one of Ashton’s dimples.

“Yeah?” Ashton says, his voice wavering slightly. “Well, you have nice legs.”

Luke glances down at his legs for a second, as if he’d forgotten about them. He then looks up at Ashton and says, “You have cool hair.”

“Is this a competition?” Ashton asks, a small smile playing on his lips. It’s definitely a competition he could get used to. “Then you have nice eyes.” He looks straight into Luke’s eyes before continuing. “The bluest blue I’ve ever seen. So blue they could kill someone. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No, they haven’t,” Luke says, his voice coming out a little weak around the edges.  “Congratulations on being the first.” Ashton nods and appreciates the way Luke becomes obviously flustered at that, the way he can’t maintain eye contact. “Your eyes are…” Luke trails off and his mouth hangs open. “They’re, um —”

“Blind,” Calum jumps in. Ashton and Luke separate quickly; both of them turn away from each other and Ashton takes a few steps away because fuck, when did they get so close to each other? How long have they been in the rec field? Why is everyone leaving? “Ashton’s blind. He wears glasses, didn’t he tell you that? Or, he’s supposed to wear glasses. He never does. Cue the blindness.”

“Thanks, Copper,” Ashton says with sarcasm laced into his tone. He shoots Calum a look that says ‘fuck off, we were having a moment,’ to which Calum responds with by nodding.

“Anytime,” Calum chirps. “Also, remember to keep things rated G here!” Ashton fucking _hates_ him, and suddenly begins to worry about how much he overheard. “It would be really bad for the kids to see two of their favorite counselors destroying each other with their eyes.”

“We were not — that’s not even possible!” Luke protests, his face an alarming shade of red. Ashton figures his own face must be the same.

Calum nods sarcastically, flashing both of them a quick thumbs-up before sauntering off to gather his campers.

◊

The natural reaction when given the golden plunger is, apparently, to plunge it. It makes sense, at least. Unfortunately, Luke ends up shielding the golden plunger from his own cabin after Dylan plunged it once out of curiosity and a layer of the gold paint peeled off on the handle.

Upon bringing back the golden plunger to their cabin, Luke and Ashton’s campers end up circling around it in awe because — believe it or not — it’s _golden_. It’s their trophy; their prized possession.

It seemed the gummy bears worked like a charm. Though several other counselors accused them of cheating (Michael in particular), the head counselor was won over by the bribery easily. Even though their prize only spends one night with them, having won the golden plunger is an honor. They put the golden plunger off to the side of their cabin, next to their neat line of shoes.

The kids are in the cabin preparing for the campfire, collecting their jackets and flashlights for when the sun sets later. The air outside is already cold, and since some kids left their windows open to let a breeze of air in, the cabin’s a little chilly as well.

Ashton puts on a beanie, his curls peeking out from underneath, and finds a pair of gloves to slip on. He’d learned that the campfire usually went pretty late — late enough for everyone to start complaining about the cold, even with the fire. And since it would be the last campfire of the week, he wants to spend it in comfort.

Ashton’s standing by his bunk, his duffle bag on top of his sleeping bag in front of him, as he makes another attempt at zipping the bag up. He makes a mental reminder to learn how to fold clothes in the future — to prevent him from getting stuck in these situations.

He’s about to give up and hide it under his bunk like he usually does, when suddenly he feels someone drape themselves onto his back, long arms pulling him close. This person’s taller than Ashton, and since he doesn’t happen to know any thirteen-year-olds with that height, it narrows it down to only one person.

Ashton laughs at first and then asks, “What are you doing?”

Luke nuzzles his face into the nape of Ashton’s neck. “Hugging you,” he mumbles softly. Ashton twists his neck around quickly to make sure that they’re out of view from the campers. God knows what kind of explaining they would have to do. In fact, Ashton doesn’t even know if he could explain it to himself, considering that he doesn’t quite know what’s happening either. Luke never usually seemed to enjoy physical contact.

“And you’re hugging me because…?”

Luke removes his face from Ashton’s neck and rests his chin on Ashton’s shoulder, his body still pressed up against Ashton’s back. “You brought the gummy bears,” he says, “and I thought that if I cuddled you then you might be willing to spare a few.” His arms are still wrapped tightly around Ashton, limiting the use of Ashton’s own arms. 

“You’re using me?” Ashton says with mock disgust. “I thought you were different.”

“Is that a no?” Luke whines, though he doesn’t make any effort to let go of Ashton. And, well. Ashton doesn’t really mind being hugged from behind by the cute counselor.

“You’re cute,” Ashton says in a joking manner. Luke lets go of him and flashes a hopeful smile. “When we get back from the campfire I’ll think about it.”

Luke pouts. “Come on.”

That’s when Ashton comes up with a brilliant idea. At first he isn’t sure if he should say it, if perhaps it might make him look too obvious. But he figures he could probably pass it off as simple teasing.

“I’ll propose you an offer,” Ashton says. “You cuddle with me during the campfire and I’ll let you have a few.”

To say that Luke lights up like a Christmas tree is an understatement. He reaches out to hug Ashton again (though this time they’re actually facing each other) and suddenly Ashton realizes that the idea he’s just brought up might possibly reflect a gentle form of prostitution. Well.

The walk down to the amphitheater is filled with excitement buzzing among the campers. The skits showcased at the last campfire are usually the funniest, and Ashton’s group has a great one (in his opinion) planned out.

Luke and Ashton take a seat at the far back row of the wooden benches spanning out around the stage of the amphitheater. Their campers sit in their general area, a few rows in front of them, and Luke begins unfolding the fleece blanket he’s brought down with him.

“Really?” Luke and Ashton look up to see Michael and Calum shuffling their way over, Calum pointing at the blanket in Luke’s hand with an eyebrow raised. “Do you really need a blanket in the middle of summer?”

“Hey, it could be worse,” Michael puts in. “At least there aren’t little penguins all over it as a public announcement that he’s twelve years old.”

Luke lets out a sigh. “You know, I _was_ going to share with you guys, but I think it’s just gonna be me and Pascal now.” Ashton mentally cheers and leans forward to shoot Calum and Michael a smug grin from the other side of Luke.

“I’m sure he’s delighted to hear that,” Calum remarks, and Ashton drops his smile. Calum can go fuck himself, really.

Luke and Ashton pull the blanket over themselves while campfire gets started. As far as Ashton knows, Luke’s group isn’t doing a skit due to their inability to come up with something creative. Ashton had teased him about it on their walk down to the campfire and Luke had tried to trip him on the dirt path several times.

Ashton isn’t sure when, but sometime after the first few skits, Luke ends up dropping his head so it’s resting on Ashton’s shoulder. The air is beginning to get colder, the tall trees surrounding the amphitheater blocking out the evening sun that should be shining over them and replacing it with dark shadows. The actual burning fire is situated down on the gravel separating the seats and the stage, and since Luke and Ashton are sat pretty far back, none of that warmth comes to them.

Ashton figures that if it wasn’t for Luke sitting so closely to him, he would probably be a little annoyed at the cold air settling in. But Luke does a good job at stopping that.

“You don’t actually have to cuddle with me,” Ashton whispers after a while. Luke’s still leaning against Ashton. “I was kidding. I’ll still give you the gummy bears.”

Luke doesn’t answer for a while, his gaze focused over the rows of campers and counselors and on the stage in front of them. One group is showing off their skit, earning a laugh every few seconds, but the truth is that Ashton tuned out a while ago. Not because the skit isn’t funny, but simply because the cute counselor’s voluntarily cuddling him and, well, who can blame him if that’s where his focus lies?

“I’m keeping my end of the deal,” Luke finally whispers, so quietly that Ashton almost doesn’t catch it. “You’re keeping your end of the deal, so I’m keeping mine.”

Ashton opens his mouth to say something but is cut off when he looks over to see Brandon tugging his arm, his campers all circled around him. Apparently there’s one more group up before it’s time for their skit, and Luke sits up straight so Ashton can get prepared. He takes the blanket off of him and stands up.

Ashton and his campers head down the rows quietly and cluster up behind the stage, discussing their skit and making sure plans fall into place. Everything seems fine until suddenly Tanner admits that he’d left a major prop up at the cabin. Ashton bites his lip for a moment, his mind buzzing frantically, when he suddenly comes up with an idea.

“Stay here,” he orders. He dashes out from behind the stage and heads up behind the crowd back up to where Luke’s sitting, snuggling underneath his blanket and shielding the lower half of his face with it.

“Can I borrow your blanket?” Ashton whispers, ducking down. Luke looks at him with confusion swimming in his eyes, and then hesitantly takes it off and hands it over. Ashton whispers a quick thank-you and joins back up with his campers; just barely making it backstage before the other group finishes and it’s their turn.

There’s quiet chatter settling over the audience as the groups switch out and three of Ashton’s campers scatter off to sit in the audience as planned. Ashton helps Josh put the blanket on over his head, covering his upper-body with it and making sure his face is concealed so he can’t see. He then leads him up the stage carefully, helping him find the steps and making sure he doesn’t trip, because that would call for an entirely new skit.

The chatter dissolves and the whole camp’s attention focuses on Ashton (and Josh, hidden underneath the blanket, though Ashton thinks he has the easy end of the deal). Ashton was never really a shy person, but with over a hundred pairs of eyes focused on him, his stomach does a flip anyway.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” Ashton announces. “Come and see the ugliest man in the world! In fact, being so ugly he is guaranteed to make you faint. _So ugly_ that his face needs to be concealed at all times for the safety of the public.” He can hear a few remarks bubbling in the audience. “Would any volunteers like to have a peak?”

There are, of course, a scattering of hands that shoot up, and Ashton follows the plan and picks Dylan. Dylan jogs up the stage effortlessly, all part of the act to show off his confidence, and lifts the blanket up slightly, still out of the audience’s view. He lets out an “Oh my gosh” before pretending to faint and falling to the floor of the stage. There’re a few laughs from the audience and Ashton’s silently glad that thirteen-year-olds think people falling over are funny, though they haven’t gotten to the punchline yet.

“Would anyone else like to have a look?” Ashton asks. It goes on like this for two more rounds when he picks Brandon and Tanner, both of them falling to the floor of the stage each time. Once all of his campers are up on the stage (most of them pretending to be passed out) he turns back to the audience and asks if anyone from the “general public” would be “brave enough” to give it a shot.

This time Ashton picks Michael, because he knows he’ll get a better laugh from the camp when he picks a counselor everyone knows. Michael jogs down the gravel between the row of seats and up onto the stage, smoothly walking over to Josh. He carefully lifts up the blanket but, instead of Michael falling to the ground and fainting, Josh does. There’s a roar of laughter and Michael looks personally offended, his mouth dropping into an appalled ‘O’ and his eyebrows furrowed.

Though Ashton apologizes to Michael several times after the skit is over, Michael refuses to acknowledge his existence for the rest of the night.


	5. capture the flag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there won't be an update next week since i'm traveling AGAIN and also just a heads-up this chapter is the cheesiest thing i've ever written pls forgive me ily

“I already told you,” Ashton whines, picking up a blue napkin, unfolding it, and dropping it on Michael’s head purely just to annoy him. Michael pulls it off his head, scrunches it up and tosses it in the garbage can next to the short tables laid out in front of them. “I don’t like him,” Ashton continues. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t use your Titanic pickup line because it’s too raunchy.”

They’re standing out in front of the amphitheater, setting up the tables for the campfire roast that’s happening tonight. They’ve got the clear bags of hotdog and hamburger buns next to each other, the paper plates neatly stacked up by the water cooler (ironically filled with Gatorade), and the utensils set in little plastic boxes at the end of the table.

Everyone looks forward to the campout every year — it means tasty food, s’mores, and spending the night out in the rec field, settling in the cool summer breeze after a long day. The downside is that the campout always happens on the last night of camp. Though most people are dying to get home at this point of the week, Ashton feels like he’s being rushed. He has less than 24 hours to tell Luke the truth — if he still plans on doing that — and he isn’t sure if he’ll make it in time. He isn’t sure if he even wants to do it because what even _is_ the truth?

Michael had gathered them all up after breakfast to discuss morning free time plans. Anyway, the last day needed to be well-spent. When Calum brought up the idea to go swimming, Michael let out a complaint about how he’d already gone swimming every other day this week, but everyone ignored him. In fact, Ashton completely supported the idea of going swimming (and it definitely wasn’t because he wanted to see Luke shirtless).

Michael, Calum, and Ashton had all agreed to help out with the campfire roast for the afternoon block of free time. It was known that whoever set up the food would also get the first choice of food — which was more than a bargain for them. Luke was about to join them until he was unexpectedly asked by one of his campers to supervise the indoor theater. Ashton had naturally volunteered to join him, but was yanked back by Michael when he said they had “things to discuss”, which apparently translated to “we need to talk about ways to get you to pour out your heart to the cute counselor you have a disgusting crush on”. (Ashton had protested several times)

“Why not?” Michael asks, and Ashton has to think back to what they were talking about. Right — raunchy pickup lines to use on Luke. Or, _not_ to use on Luke. “Use it tonight. It’ll be really romantic. Just you two, laying out under the stars, reveling in the sexual tension radiating from your two sleeping bags. It’ll be really sweet.”

“Me telling him that I want to _go down on him_ is _not sweet_ ,” Ashton says.

“But it’s true,” Michael points out.

“Not really,” Ashton says. “What if I want _him_ to go down on _me_?”

There’s a shocked laugh and Ashton turns around to see Calum joining them with a handful of Hershey’s bars, surprisingly still in their wrappers. “Who’s going down on who?” he asks, setting the stack of chocolate down on the second table.

“Lovely of you to join us, Copper,” Michael greets. “We were simply discussing ways to get Pascal to win over the heart of —”

“No one,” Ashton cuts him off, shooting him a glare before he can say anything too horrific. “We were just talking about pickup lines.”

“According to Pascal, ‘raunchy’ pickup lines,” Michael clarifies.

Calum sits up on the second table but, upon feeling the legs swaying underneath his weight, decides to hop off again. “Okay,” he says. “Like what?”

“It’s too gross for camp,” Ashton says, though they happen to be the only people in the area; the campers are all still jumping around at their respective free time stations.

“Well, I’ve already heard half of it — something about someone going down on someone. So you may as well finish it.”

“Let’s play Titanic,” Michael pipes up with a wide grin. Ashton lets out a strangled, ignored protest and covers his face with his hands before Michael can even finish it. “You can be the iceberg and I’ll go down.”

Calum’s jaw drops and Ashton shakes his head.

“Wow,” Calum breathes, laughing a little. “That’s — who did you want Pascal to use that on?”

Ashton says “nobody” and Michael says “Luke”.

“Tell him you wanna make babies with him,” Michael suddenly blurts out. Ashton hates him.

“Tell him that if he was a fruit,” Calum says, “he would be a _fine_ apple.” Ashton hates Calum, too.

“Ask him if he’s a piece of art because you want to nail him up against the wall,” Michael supplies. Ashton chokes a little at that.

“Ask him what he does for a living besides being sexy,” Calum says, waggling his eyebrows.

“Tell him that you may not be a pack of 5 Gum, but you could still stimulate his senses,” Michael puts in.

“You guys are pathetic,” Ashton says, trying to direct his attention on opening up the bundle of Styrofoam cups.

“But you love us,” Michael says. “So, make your pick. Which one’ll you be using?”

“None of them. I said I don’t like him.”

“You do, though!” Calum protests. “If you don’t tell him tonight then we’ll tell him ourselves.”

Ashton shoots Calum a scowl. “Isn’t that blackmail?”

Another chatty group of counselors appears behind the corner, wielding extra packages of food, and they decide to drop their conversation there, but not before Michael can shoot Ashton a look that says ‘this isn’t over’.

◊

When Ashton sees Luke later in the evening, he notices something on the corner of his bottom lip (not that Ashton’s looking at his lips — of course not) and he can almost swear it’s a lip ring. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? Luke didn’t have a lip ring at the start of the week; Ashton would notice something like that (again, not that Ashton was looking at his lips or anything). He brushes it off and instead tries to focus on cooking his meal for the evening.

Ashton finds an opening in the crowd surrounding the campfire, holding out skewers with marshmallows on the ends. The sun is just about to set, blanketing the camp in a calming orange light as the wind begins to pick up. Ashton’s one of the last people to start working on his s’more since he had so much trouble with his hot dog and, honestly, he’s not looking forward to it.

Roasting the hot dog was hard enough. Upon cooking them too long, Ashton went through three hot dogs that fell into the fire until he managed to get one to stay on his skewer. Everyone laughed.

Surprisingly, Ashton only goes through two marshmallows (the first one somehow ignited into flames, but he’s trying to forget that). He spots Michael, Calum, and Luke sitting on the edge of the amphitheater stage with their feet dangling over the edge, all of them nearly finished eating and seated between a crowd of other campers and counselors. There’s a short group of campers standing in front of Luke, quizzing him about his newly-discovered piercing and confirming Ashton’s suspicions. He kind of wants to join their group so he can get all the details as well, but he decides he’ll ask him about it later.

“Took you long enough,” Calum comments when Ashton jumps up to sit next to him. He’s tempted to elbow Calum in the ribs but instead settles on ignoring him.

Michael and Calum continue the conversation they were having about sea turtles, and Ashton tunes out, focusing on eating his s’more. When Ashton’s the only one still eating out of the four of them, he notices Luke, sitting on the other side of Michael, jumping off the stage and walking over to sit next to him.

“You’re a slow eater,” Luke comments, jumping up onto the stage, their thighs brushing as he takes a seat. Ashton turns to glare at him, only to be metaphorically slapped in the face when he sees Luke smiling at him. Getting mad at Luke is utterly impossible.

“And you’re… slow at everything,” Ashton retorts, though Luke doesn’t seem offended in the slightest. “I didn’t know you had a lip ring,” Ashton adds in, biting into his s’more, trying to play it off casually and failing when the marshmallow spills out of the edges and onto his fingers. He wipes his fingers on his jeans since he forgot to grab a napkin.

“Is it good or bad?” Luke asks, fiddling with it gently.

“It’s hot,” Michael jumps in from the opposite end. Luke and Ashton turn swiftly at his sudden outburst, as if they’d forgotten he was even there. And maybe they did, a little. “Pascal thinks it’s hot,” Michael continues. He winks and sticks his tongue out, earning a scowl from Ashton.

“When did I say that?” Ashton asks.

“You didn’t,” Calum says. “But you were thinking it, weren’t you?”

Ashton decides he needs to get some new friends. Preferably some friends that won’t ruin his chances at dating the cute counselor. But he figures his chances weren’t really high in the first place, so they couldn’t have done too much damage.

“See?” Michael says pointedly when Ashton doesn’t reply. “You think it’s hot.”

“No, I —” Ashton turns around to face Luke, (who has a smug grin on his face, the traitorous bastard) “You don’t believe them, do you?”

Luke shrugs lightly, as if it’s no big deal. “I don’t know. Do you think it’s hot?”

Ashton had been trying to fight down a blush from creeping onto his cheeks but suddenly loses this battle. “I wouldn’t say _hot_ ,” he says sheepishly, ignoring the screaming in his head that says otherwise. Of course Luke’s hot; is Luke ever _not_ hot? “It looks good, though. Very _punk_.”

Luke smiles proudly and Calum rolls his eyes, letting out a loud groan as he jumps off the stage and walks away. Michael snorts and follows after Calum, leaving Luke and Ashton staring at each other blankly. They stare at each other for a while for no particular reason, both of them opening and closing their mouths stupidly, trying to start a conversation but not being able to find the words. They end up giggling at each other instead.

◊

Everyone pulls down their sleeping bags into the rec field after dinner. Despite there being hundreds of people, the field is large enough to accommodate everyone with a plethora of room to spare. Ashton decides to set his stuff down next to Calum and Michael’s, the two of them off playing a game of Ninja with a group of campers. Ashton’s campers settle down a reasonable distance from him before engrossing themselves in their own activities.

Ashton unrolls his sleeping bag and, despite it being only eight o’clock, falls over the top of his sleeping bag, curling into the fetal position, and closes his eyes, letting the chatter of children-with-too-much-energy lull him to sleep.

But he doesn’t get very far in his sleep and only makes it a couple minutes before he feels someone nudging his shoulder.

“I swear to god, Copper…” Ashton mutters, rolling over and opening his eyes. Calum’s crouched beside him with a mischievous grin on his face, and that’s never good.

“Will you be my partner?” Calum asks bluntly. Ashton sits up lazily, watching Michael and Luke in the center of the field trying (and failing) to get a game of soccer going. So much for that game of Ninja.

“Your partner?” Ashton repeats warily. “What, in like, marriage? Because no.”

Calum rolls his eyes. “Please, I have more dignity than that,” he says with a wave of his hand. Ashton scrunches his face up with mock-offense before Calum continues. “For capture the flag, you idiot.”

Ashton’s eyes subtly dart over to Luke and then lock back with Calum’s. “I thought we were sticking with our cabins. Like, me and Nemo, and you and Olaf.”

“That’s not fun, though,” Calum whines. “We need to switch it up. Plus, I’m sure you and Nemo like having a little competition between you two. Winner gets to top.”

“Winner gets to _what_? Top? You mean like bunk beds?”

“So, is that a yes?” Calum’s smiling a hopeful grin, completely ignoring the fact that he’d just made a sexual innuendo whilst being surrounded by hundreds of kids.

“Uh — but —”

“Great!” Ashton shies away when Calum leans over to pat him (rather harshly) on the back. “The game’s in ten minutes, I think. Power naps are not the way to prepare.” Ashton grumbles in protest. “Let’s get our campers together and huddle up, okay?”

“No,” Ashton says weakly, but Calum’s already darting off to gather them up. As Ashton sits in confusion for a moment, trying to gain the strength to get up, he takes that moment to notice another sleeping bag has suddenly appeared next to his. Noticing the stuffed penguin sitting on top of the pillow, Ashton bites back a smile, ignores the way his stomach does a pathetic flip, and gets up to go find his campers.

It takes him and Calum a few moments to locate their campers (though Ashton had no trouble finding Josh, who was unsurprisingly reading a book quietly). Once they’re all grouped up, Ashton finds himself staring out to a group of fairly unfamiliar faces, and a feeling of uneasiness settles in his stomach. He misses being partners with Luke and his campers, but bites down the words before he can say them.

“Okay, guys,” Calum begins. The kids are all gathered up quietly, as if they’re trying to concentrate and get into their game zone. “Capture the flag. You all know how this game works. Remember, stay in the meadow, don’t wander off into the forest, and nothing _too_ violent.”

Ashton turns to Calum and frowns. “No violence at all,” he corrects. “We’re playing a nice, fair game here.”

“Yeah, somewhat fair,” Calum shrugs. “We can’t hide the flag in any trees or anywhere off the ground or we’ll get disqualified. Also the flag isn’t actually a flag, but oh well. And get ready to…” Calum clenches his fist in the air and pauses, searching for the words, “get ready to _capture_ that _flag_.”

The kids nod seriously and Ashton forces back a sarcastic remark about Calum's weak pep-talk. They’re playing the game up in the meadow by the indoor theater, which, admittedly, isn’t as good as the rec field since it’s not even half the size, but it’ll have to do. The grass is a little overgrown, unfortunately covering up the random scattering of dog feces, but Calum insisted they would add an “interesting twist” to the game. And, yeah, of course they would. It’s always entertaining seeing someone get pushed into a pile of dog shit.

Calum hands off the “flag” (which is really just a purple foam football) to one of his campers, and the group disperses to go place it in the designated location they had decided on.

Ashton looks up across the meadow, shaded by the forest around them, and catches Luke and Michael glaring over at them from the border. It’s a harsh glare from the two of them, which hits him with surprise at first, but Calum isn’t even fazed.

“They’re just angry ’cause they know they won’t win,” Calum whispers, leaning closer to Ashton and smirking. Ashton shoots Calum a nervous glance. He was never really good when they played capture the flag in gym class, and he’s sure that two years later he’s probably just as awful.

The game starts off pretty slowly, mostly just everyone trying to split up their jobs, sending people to stand at border patrol and other people to guard the prisons and the general area of the football. There are a lot of campers glaring at each other from across the border, taunting each other and trying to distract the opposing team.

Ashton stands by the prison to make sure the kids from the other team will stay in their places once they get tagged. The prison fills embarrassingly fast with a handful of members from Michael and Luke’s team; meanwhile Calum and Ashton have only lost two campers so far. Ashton feels a little guilty since some of the kids are in the same cabin as him, like he’s betraying them, and some of them try to sweet-talk their way out of jail.

“Hey, Pascal?”

Ashton turns around to see one of Luke’s campers sitting in the jail looking particularly sad with a few of his other teammates stuck with him. He figures it’s all part of some plan.

“Nope, can’t talk to prisoners,” Ashton says, turning away smugly. That doesn’t shut the camper up, though.

“What if I were to cut you a deal? You let one of my teammates run over here and get us out of jail and I’ll sweep the cabin tomorrow morning and take down all the decorations and stuff.”

Ashton turns around slowly, pretending to contemplate the idea. He strokes his chin for effect and hums quietly.

“Is that the best you can come up with?” Ashton asks.

There’s a loud shout from Calum, and Ashton turns around quickly to see a blur sprinting over, trying to leap over the tall grass and looking noticeably awkward as he does it. Ashton runs forward as soon as he sees them. He only intends to tap the runner on the shoulder or something — just enough to land them in the jail as well. He only realizes it’s Luke when they’re a few feet away from each other.

It’s also this moment that Ashton notices a stunning pile of dog crap right in his path and dodges around it quickly with an embarrassingly high-pitched squeal, causing him and Luke to crash into each other. The impact of the collision sends both of them to the ground before either of them can actually register what’s going on. There’s a tangle of limbs and then a falling sensation. It takes a few seconds for everything to calm down and Ashton hears a pounding sound echoing through his head. He’s lying on his back in the grass of the meadow with a solid weight on top of him and a headache lurking in his future.

When he opens his eyes and sees Luke laying on top of him, trying to catch his breath, the two of them make a brief second of eye contact, their faces only inches away from each other. Luke rolls off him quickly, hoping Ashton won’t notice the blush surfacing on his cheeks.

“What was that?” Ashton says, still lying in the grass.

“Well, usually people don’t slam into each other when they play this game,” Luke deadpans next to him, lying on his stomach. “I’ll be lucky if I don’t have a concussion after that.” Ashton hears a shuffling sound in the grass and looks over to see Calum jogging over. Luke gets up on his own, mumbles something inaudible to Ashton, and then lazily makes his way over to the jail.

“Are you okay?” Calum asks, offering Ashton a hand up. Ashton stares up at Calum’s hand for a moment with confusion, as if he’s forgotten what a hand even is, before finally reaching up and grabbing it, letting Calum pull him back to his feet.

“I feel kind of sick,” Ashton replies weakly. “Uh, my head hurts.” He grabs onto Calum as his legs try to regain their balance.

“Okay,” Calum mumbles under his breath, holding onto Ashton as he wobbles around. His tone is quiet, as if Ashton’s the only one that’s supposed to be able to hear him. “Not the general reaction someone would have if their favorite sexy counselor was suddenly on top of them, but okay.”

Ashton punches him in the arm. “There was a… there was a poop,” he says weakly. Calum snickers.

The rest of the game is a bit of a blur for Ashton — possibly because his head feels like it’ll roll off at any given second, but he trudges through the pain anyway. Luke’s fucking lanky and awkward, he learns, after seeing him trip five more times in the game. He can’t really be blamed, of course. Having long legs means you’re bound to fall over a lot, but it seems like Luke is abnormally more likely to do it than anyone else.

Plus, Ashton decides that he kind of looks like a pony when he skips over the grass. Then he remembers that people ride ponies and he smirks at the irony.

Calum and Ashton’s group ends up winning in the end, thanks to Dylan and Tanner’s clever tactic of having everyone run over the line at the same time and confusing the other team. Michael mutters something bitter and refuses to high-five them for playing a good game.

The sun’s already set when they begin making their way back to the rec field; the campers are sweaty, covered in dirt with disheveled hair. The darkness settling in is making it a bit of a challenge for everyone to make out their surroundings; Calum makes everyone promise to stay with the group.

However, Ashton ends up deciding to leave their group halfway through, pressing a hand to his forehead and announcing he’s going to go get an icepack as the world spins around him. He can see Luke out of the corner of his eye, staring at him as he separates from the pack by choosing another path.

But next thing he knows, Luke is by his side. Ashton is a little confused at first, about whether he should say something or not, but instead gives him a weird look as they walk onto the branching dirt path together.

“I’m sorry,” Luke blurts out. “Um.” He pauses and bites his lower lip. “I don’t usually end up ramming into people?” Ashton looks over and snorts. “I mean — okay, poor word choice. I just, how — how bad does your head hurt? I feel pretty awful, sorry. I should’ve looked where I was going, you know? I just got really into the game and I was almost there and —”

“Luke, what are you doing?” Ashton asks once they’re a reasonable distance away from the campers.

Luke initially looks taken aback upon hearing Ashton use his real name at camp. Then he opens his mouth to answer Ashton’s original question, but suddenly frowns and closes it in confusion, as if he doesn’t have an answer either.

“Well, I feel kind of bad,” Luke explains after a moment of thinking. “I mean, what if you _do_ have a concussion and you end up passing out halfway through this walk? Then what? Then it’ll all be my fault, so.”

Ashton giggles (which probably isn’t the appropriate reaction) and Luke looks a little startled.

“I’m fine,” Ashton says. “I’ll live. It’s just a headache. I’m just getting an icepack. The administration office is like twenty yards away. It’s right there.” Ashton points at a building that can be made out between the vertical lines of the trees.

“Okay, but… I’m not leaving you.”

Ashton looks up at Luke (up! why is Luke so tall?) and can see the anxiety on his face as he fiddles with his lip ring.

“That’s cute,” Ashton says with a smile, reaching an arm over to wrap around Luke’s shoulders. Luke doesn’t move away like Ashton expects him to.

“I thought you said I was hot,” Luke pouts, and that catches Ashton off-guard, makes him pull his arm off Luke. Upon noticing Luke suddenly looking a little sad at Ashton letting go of him, Ashton lets out a quiet cough and definitely doesn’t speed up his pace. Only a few more steps and they’re in the administration office and Ashton can go hunt down that icepack without embarrassing himself in front of Luke. Because, honestly, he’s done way too much of that in the past week.

“When did I — when did I say you were hot?” Ashton asks.

“Wow, I’m insulted,” Luke says, and Ashton hopes it’s jokingly, but he’s not quite sure. “You say it in such a condescending tone.” Okay, not joking, then? Is Luke one of those people that use large words when they’re angry or when they’re teasing? There are fireworks shooting off in Ashton’s brain. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s panicking or if it’s because his head isn’t straight. Yeah, pun intended.

“Well, I mean, do you want to be hot?”

 _Smooth._ Ashton is fucking _smooth_.

Luke doesn’t answer this time; he grabs the handle of the front door leading into the administration office and holds it open for Ashton, who feels a pang of guilt when he mumbles a quiet thank you. Luke still doesn’t say anything.

They have to do quite a bit of searching for an icepack since the head counselor doesn’t really know where they are. Ashton suppresses a sigh and he and Luke follow the head counselor back outside, down the path, and into the dining hall kitchen.

The kitchen’s fluorescent lights are nearly blinding compared to the impending darkness outside, and they still don’t find an icepack. The head counselor mutters something about how “that probably can’t be safe” and they instead settle on getting Ashton a Ziploc bag full of ice cubes.

 Ashton presses it up to his forehead and walks out of the building with Luke following behind. The head counselor heads off in another direction, bidding the two of them a goodnight.

There’s a strange silence between Luke and Ashton once they’re left alone in the night air. The camp is dark now, and they’re thankful the rec field is just down the path so they won’t have to spend the rest of the night stumbling around blindly.

The rec field is barely visible under the night sky, though many campers have glowing wristbands on and a few people are pulling out their flashlights. There’s a buzz among the crowd while everyone tries to get settled in.

It takes Luke and Ashton awhile to find their sleeping bags since neither of them have lights to guide them. Ashton still has the icepack pressed up to his head and he can feel the pain fading off, which is good because that means he might not have a concussion after all.

He stops walking when he hears a loud cry beneath him and realizes he has just stepped on someone.

“I’m sorry!” Ashton blurts out. “Sorry, I couldn’t see you! I don’t have a light on me and —”

“What was that for?”

Ashton recognizes that voice. It’s Calum.

“Copper?” Ashton asks. “Oh, it’s just you. Well, I take back my apology, then.” Despite it being fairly dark out, Ashton can faintly see Calum glaring up at him. He’s already cocooned in his sleeping bag, hair slightly ruffled up. “You look cute,” Ashton says.

“Are you sucking up to me?” Calum hisses. “You can’t just pretend you didn’t walk on my face.”

“I can sit on it too, if you’d like,” Ashton says, crouching down to unzip his duffel bag and sift through for his toiletries. It’s only getting darker and his vision was already crappy to begin with, putting him at a disadvantage.

Calum mutters a noise of disapproval before cuddling back into his sleeping bag and rolling over so he doesn’t have to face Ashton.

Ashton’s finally located the tiny pouch with his various hygiene essentials when he suddenly remembers his beanie is missing.

“Copper?” Ashton says with his voice lowered; most people have started settling in for the night and the only noise that can be heard is the faint hum of crickets chirping. “Copper?” he repeats.

Calum turns over angrily, his eyes still shut as he grumbles with exasperation, “What do you want?”

“Where’s my beanie? The one that you took down to the lake?” There’s a short pause and Ashton punches him lightly in the shoulder in case he’d fallen asleep. “Copper!”

“Still at the lake, I think,” Calum mutters with obvious grogginess in his tone. “I took it off ’cause it got hot and I think I put it on one of the posts on the dock. Oops.”

Ashton lets out an agitated moan. “Do you have a flashlight?” Calum moves so he’s on his stomach and buries his face in his pillow, ignoring Ashton’s question. Ashton punches him in the shoulder again, only to receive a muffled “no” in response. “What about Olaf?” Ashton asks.

“Shut up and go to bed,” Michael mutters. Ashton can’t see him in the darkness, can only make out a faint shadow shifting around on the other side of Calum. If shadows could appear irritated, Michael’s would be the one to do that.

“I need my beanie!” Ashton hisses. “It gets cold at night and I can’t just leave it out there alone.”

“It’s a beanie!” Calum whines loudly, earning a chorus of annoyed hushes from the campers resting close to them. “Get it in the morning,” he says quietly.

“It’s an important beanie,” Ashton insists.

“Why don’t you ask your spit-swapping buddy to go with you?” Calum says.

“My _what_?” Ashton asks. “We’re not —” Ashton stops himself quickly after realizing that Calum never actually said a name, yet Ashton’s still assuming it’s Luke. Calum doesn’t reply, so Ashton, faced with no other choice, turns to Luke as his last resort. He isn’t sure if Luke’s still sad about what Ashton said earlier about him not being hot, and he would apologize if he could, but he also doesn’t want to come off as creepy and accidentally blurt out the truth — that he really _does_ find Luke to be hot.

“Hey, Nemo?” Ashton says. Luke’s sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag and Ashton can barely make out his form in the darkness. “You have a light?”

Luke mumbles something quietly and turns around to search through his bag. He pulls out a flat rectangle and taps it a few times before a light in the top corner of the phone beams on, blinding Ashton in the process and forcing him to push the light down for a moment.

“That’s great. Can I borrow it?”

“’m not letting you borrow my phone,” Luke states. There’s a pause between them. “I’ll go with you. We’re heading to the bathroom, right?” Luke moves to a standing position, taking his phone with him, and shines it down at Ashton when he doesn’t copy his actions.

“I have to go to the lake first,” Ashton says, holding up a hand to shield the light from his eyes. “Then we can come back here and head to the bathroom later,” he offers. Luke mumbles a quiet “okay” and Ashton sets his half-melted bag of ice cubes down on the grass by his pillow. He stands up, reaching down quickly to grab his gray hoodie. After clumsily slipping it on to protect him from the cold, he gives Luke a thumbs-up signal and they head off.

Luke’s shining the phone down in front of them, lighting up the sleeping bags lying between them and the nearest path.

“Why are we going to the lake?” Luke asks once they’re out of the rec field.

“Because some friends don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘borrow’,” Ashton clarifies. Luke responds with a simple “oh” and waits for Ashton to elaborate. “I let Copper use my beanie and he left it there.”

“What an ass,” Luke says, and Ashton lets out an agreeing laugh.

“No swearing, remember?”

“Rules were meant to be broken,” Luke supplies with a faint smile that Ashton doesn’t notice in the darkness. They stop at a fork in the path and Luke angles the light up so they can make out their surroundings better. “You know where we’re going?”

“That way, I think,” Ashton says, pointing off to the left. “I can see the water from here.”

“You better be right,” Luke says, following Ashton down the trail. “If we get lost, my death is on you.”

“Your _death_?” Ashton says. “The most deadly thing around here is, like, the common blackbird. And those don’t usually kill people.”

“Hey, there’s a first for everything,” Luke says as the dock comes into their line of vision. Ashton, upon noticing a black smudge capped on one of the posts at the end, heads toward it, hoping it’s his beanie and regretting not wearing his glasses. Luke follows after him in silence, aiming the light at the post for him.

The water is calm under the night sky, stretched out in front of them with the light breeze sending small ripples over the lake. Ashton goes to retrieve the beanie from the post and pulls it on over his head.

“It’s so nice out here,” Luke says, taking a seat on the edge of the dock and letting his legs dangle, the bottom of his shoes only inches away from the surface of the water. “Makes the rec field look like shit. Not sure if I want to go back there, really.”

“Hey!” Ashton takes a seat next to Luke. “The rec field is _not_ shit,” he protests. “It’s just… popular. And quite social. But that’s not the rec field’s fault. How would you feel if you were the rec field?”

“I wouldn’t feel,” Luke states. “Large patches of grass don’t usually have emotions.”

“You’re a blast at parties, aren’t you?” Ashton says. “Do you seduce people with the quadratic equation?”

“Negative B plus or minus the square-root of —”

Ashton laughs and punches Luke in the shoulder before he can finish. “Thanks for confirming.”

Luke smiles, mumbles a quick “no problem” and scrolls through his phone for a moment, taps a few buttons until the light turns off, then sets it down next to him and looks out at the lake.

Ashton looks up at the stars sprinkled infinitely across the night sky, and then back down at Luke. Luke counts as a star, he thinks. He’s brighter than any of the stars in the sky, except Ashton doesn’t say that out loud because he’s twenty years old and has no excuse to be unreasonably corny. He notices Luke fiddling with the daisy chain bracelet on his wrist he gave him yesterday and something hits him inside. He was honestly planning on Luke throwing it away or something; it’s a surprise that thing is still intact.

“I’m surprised you still have that,” Ashton comments, pointing at the flowers around his wrist. A few of the daisies are a little crushed, but still holding together.

“It reminds me of you,” Luke says after a short pause.

Ashton can’t quite explain what he feels after hearing that, but he knows it falls somewhere between the lines of shock and intense fondness. There are so many things he wants to say to that, so many words he wants to let out, but he instead settles on a simple “oh”.

“I have a question,” Luke says. He drops his other hand so he’s not playing with the bracelet anymore, like everything’s all business from here on out. “You know that thing you said yesterday? About how you know someone that likes me? Like, _like_ likes me?”

Ashton partially wants to say no, since his mind still hasn’t caught up with the fact that he actually told Luke that. But it turns out that Ashton’s answer doesn’t really matter in the end, since Luke continues before Ashton can say anything.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Luke says. “Because it’s kinda weird, you know… because I haven’t really talked to anyone new here, so I don’t really know anyone who would like me.”

“Yeah,” is all Ashton manages to say. A lousy response on his behalf.

“So… you ever gonna tell me who it is?” Luke asks, upon realizing that that one word is all Ashton has to offer. Ashton finally forces himself to look at Luke, and his breath hitches when their eyes meet.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles, dragging his gaze away again. He focuses on the small ripples in the water, on the way the breeze makes the water gently lap up against the shore on the opposite side, and how the stars faintly reflect on the lake. Basically, he focuses on everything around him that isn’t Luke.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Luke says bluntly.

That catches Ashton off-guard, makes his heart leap and his skin crawl for a moment. He didn’t expect Luke to figure it out so quickly, but he also realizes that he doesn’t have to own up if he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t have to admit that Luke’s right.

But he doesn’t lie because he can’t find it in himself to do that.

“How did you know?” he says.

Luke shrugs with the hint of a smile on his lips. “You’re not very good at keeping secrets,” he says.

“What?”

“You’re pretty obvious about it,” Luke elaborates. “No offense, I mean.”

“Right,” Ashton says. He chews on his bottom lip for a moment and can feel Luke’s stare resting on him and the weight of a thousand worlds settling in his chest. “This is the part where I get rejected, right?” He takes a deep breath because he can feel his heart pounding away at a speed that’s probably unhealthy. “This is when you explain to me that you like girls and that you don’t like me in _that way_ and how you’re straight and —”

“No,” Luke cuts him off. “Nope.” Ashton tilts his head up to look at Luke and quirks an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to keep talking. “This isn’t the part when that happens,” Luke says.

“Okay, so then when does that happen? Because if it doesn’t happen now then it’s just going to happen sometime later on and I’d really like to know before it happens so I can kind of prepare myself, and now seems like the best time —”

Luke leans towards Ashton unexpectedly, shutting him up with a gentle kiss on the lips. Luke’s lips are warm against his, a sudden shock compared to the cold night air filling the space around them. It happens so quickly that Ashton barely even registers it at first. When Luke pulls back, Ashton knows he has a dumb expression on his face as he stares back at Luke with his mouth hanging open.

“What… the fuck was that?” Ashton says, leaning forward and pulling Luke in for another kiss before he gets the chance to answer. It lasts a little longer this time — a kiss that lasts only for a few seconds somehow managing to feel like it’s stretched out for an hour.

“I’m not gonna reject you because that would be stupid of me,” Luke says afterwards, pressing their foreheads together.

“What?” Ashton says.

“God, you’re just oblivious tonight, aren’t you?” Luke presses their lips together again, and Ashton sinks into the feeling and never wants to let go. He decides that he likes kissing Luke, likes the way the cold metal of his lip ring feels pressed against his own lips, likes the way Luke brings up a hand to rest on his shoulder. “I like you, too,” Luke says once they’ve pulled away.

“Oh,” Ashton says with a tinny voice. He turns away and clears his throat with embarrassment. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Luke asks.

“I don’t know.”

Luke laughs a little, the sound piercing through the cold air and warming up everything around them, sending a light blush to Ashton’s cheeks. “I just saw you for the first time the other day and really, really wanted to hold your hand but I was like ‘that’s weird, Ashton’ and it’s also very stupid for me to like someone so quickly so I guess I tried to just brush it off as a stupid crush and, I mean, maybe it _is_ just a stupid crush but I still want to hold your hand, so, um, there’s that. I mean, it’s probably just infatuation. I learned that word in English class, by the way, and I mean, we all know about Romeo and Juliet and definitely don’t want to end up in a situation like that, so I just — I just tried to shove it off to the side.” Luke hums in response, and Ashton’s not quite sure what that means, so he keeps going. “I thought I would probably be able to get over you because this isn’t the first time I’ve done something — something stupid, but I mean. Usually the person doesn’t like me back?”

“You wanted to _get over me_?” Luke repeats in a hurt tone. “Why would you want to get over me when you could be _under me_ instead?”

“Was that a Friends reference?” Ashton asks, beaming to himself upon understanding the allusion. “Wait a second, what did you just say?” The full meaning of Luke’s words finally hits home and it’s a miracle the shock doesn’t send him toppling into the water.

But Luke doesn’t answer; he simply kisses Ashton again, and perhaps he’s making a habit out of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to talk to me on tumblr bc if you're still reading at this point i'm probably in love with you [jpglashton.tumblr.com](http://jpglashton.tumblr.com/)


	6. a paper airplane

When Ashton wakes up the next morning, he notices a few things. First off, a layer of dew has settled over night, making his sleeping bag irrationally cold. Secondly, the sky is still mostly dark, and if the sun isn’t up then he shouldn’t have to be awake either. Lastly, he can feel a hand pushing at his shoulder and someone repeating “Pascal” over and over in varying tones. 

“What,” Ashton mutters into his pillow, reaching a hand up to pull his sleeping bag over his face.

“It’s raining.” Ashton recognizes the voice as Luke’s, though he makes no effort to wake up. There’s another push at his shoulder and Ashton lets out an annoyed, muffled groan.

“I wish I could control the weather,” Ashton says.

“We have to move into the dining hall,” Luke explains. Ashton can hear the noise of other campers and counselors making their way out of the field as well. He’s torn between heading for a shelter and getting more sleep. When Ashton doesn’t answer, Luke simply sighs and says, “Fine. We’ll drag you out of your sleeping bag.” His statement is followed by a few giggles from some campers around them and suddenly the world’s gravity is rotating and Ashton lets out a shrill squeaking noise before he can be dumped onto the ground.

“Calm down!” Ashton says. Luke puts the sleeping bag back down and allows Ashton to crawl out of it himself. “I’m definitely awake now. Just… let me focus for a minute.”

The rain falls harder as Ashton scrambles around blindly for his bag and his shoes. He’s not sure if the rain is supposed to be motivating him to get his ass out of the field faster or punish him for not waking up sooner. He doesn’t even bother rolling up his sleeping bag, just decides to clumsily fold it up and attempt to keep it off the ground as Luke leads their group through the trees that are faintly etched into the darkness. It’s a miracle they don’t end up walking straight into any trees, to be honest.

The grass is squishy beneath their feet and the rain is drenching the camp, turning it into a soup bowl. When they trail into the dining hall, half the camp is already in there, some people conversing and other people with their heads down on the tables, fast asleep. The bright, fluorescent lights illuminating the place are a bit of a strain on everyone’s eyes.

“What a lovely way to end the week,” Ashton grumbles as a sudden wave of rain pelts down forcefully on the roof of the dining hall. He falls into the chair next to Luke’s, and their campers join them, a few of them having to sit at the surrounding tables since they’ve run out of seats. Ashton dumps his bag and his sleeping bag on the floor, then folds his arms on the table, rests his head on it and attempts to fall back asleep, letting the chatter wash over him. He’s made it no more than two minutes into his sleep when suddenly someone’s poking him. He warily pops open an eye, causing Luke to freeze before poking him in the shoulder another time.

“What?” Ashton says.

“Um.” Luke clears his throat. He looks unsure, but continues anyway. “It’s six-thirty and we’d have to get up in half an hour anyway, and some people are already eating breakfast, so should we do that?”  Ashton makes a confused noise and then buries his face back into his arms. “I can get you something if you want,” Luke offers sheepishly. “Like, they have some sick bacon and eggs.”

Ashton decides it’s too early for this shit. It’s too early for Luke to be a fucking nice person.

But he doesn’t say that out loud, of course. He settles with a simple, “That would be amazing,” and shoots Luke a brief smile before dropping his head back down again. He falls asleep quickly and doesn’t notice when Luke returns with two carefully balanced trays of food in hand. Luke sets the tray in front of where Ashton’s sound asleep with his hood pulled on over his head, and leaves it there because he doesn’t want to wake him.

After a few more minutes of Ashton failing to fall asleep, he decides to give up and lifts his head off the table. He grumpily rubs his eyes and the campers sitting at his table look up at him, chewing their food with innocent expressions like a group of owls. Ashton looks down and sees a plate with neatly laid out bacon, eggs, and sausages, accompanied by a cup of orange juice.

“Where’s —?” Ashton points down at his breakfast and looks at the campers, stopping himself in time before using Luke’s real name. It’s the last day of camp and they’ll be figuring out his real name eventually, but Ashton doesn’t want to give it away sooner than he has to. It takes him a moment to remember Luke’s camp name. “Where’s Nemo?”

“He’s at the other table,” one of the campers answers, taking a swig of his orange juice and setting the cup back down.

Ashton makes a noise of understanding and hesitantly picks up his clean utensils, getting ready to eat his meal. He’s just stabbed a sausage onto his fork when he feels someone tapping his shoulder.

“You don’t happen to have any towels, do you?” Calum asks. His hair is a wet mop, dripping water onto the floor of the dining hall and, to Ashton’s annoyance, right onto his sleeping bag. It’s clear that he didn’t make it out of the rain in time, and neither did his campers.

Despite Ashton’s realization that that would be him if Luke hadn’t forced him out of the field, he laughs. Calum punches him in the shoulder, sighs, and trudges over to Michael’s table.

◊

Ashton doesn’t see Luke again until breakfast is over and everyone has to drag their sleeping bags back up to their cabins, which is kind of a waste since they’ll only have to bring the sleeping bags back down in a few hours. Unfortunately they can’t just leave their sleeping bags in the dining hall since the parent lunch is being set up in there. Under ordinary circumstances, they would leave their bags in the field, but even though the rain has stopped coming down, the grass is still sopped with puddles.

When Ashton pushes open the door to their cabin, the campers are springing around the place with such fervent energy that it makes him feel dead in comparison.

“Hi, Pascal!” Dylan squeaks, Tanner following him as they go over to greet Ashton. “Nemo said that we get to find out your real names later, which is great because he said he hates calling you Pascal because it’s a stupid name.”

Ashton’s jaw drops and he asks, “Where’s Nemo?”

Tanner turns around and points at Luke’s bunk, where the lanky counselor is curled up in the fetal position, fast asleep on the bare mattress. Ashton walks over to him and first uses his phone to take a picture (it might be creepy, but he doesn’t care); then he cautiously pokes Luke in the arm. Luke shifts a little bit and squints open one eye.

“A little birdy told me you think Pascal’s a stupid name,” Ashton says.

Luke yawns and sits up, delicately threading his fingers through his hair to fix it. “Yeah,” he says. “And?”

“And?” Ashton repeats threateningly.

“It _is_ a stupid name,” Luke remarks.

“Not as stupid as _Luke_ ,” Ashton says with a shit-eating grin. The campers surrounding them let out a simultaneous gasp.

“Is that his name?” one of Luke’s campers squeals with delight. “ _Luke_?”

“Like Lucifer?” someone asks.

“Or Lucy,” Tanner comments.

“I thought he said his name was Ashton,” a quieter voice says. Ashton’s jaw slacks at that comment and he turns around nervously, trying to pinpoint who said that.

“I’m not Luke,” Luke says, wrinkling his nose up with mock disgust. “He’s Luke.” Luke points at Ashton.

Ashton isn’t quite sure how it happens (probably just a butt-load of lies and gullibility) but they manage to convince most of the campers (everyone aside from Brandon — he’s as stubborn as a mule to believe them) that Luke is Ashton and Ashton is Luke. It’s weird hearing their real names tossed around the campers, especially since they’ve gotten them switched around and have no idea why Luke snickers every time someone calls him Ashton.  

The rest of their morning is a bit chaotic with kids dashing around the cabin, expending all their energy before leaving. Ashton ends up having to assign specific jobs since everyone is so unfocused. Luke sleeps through most of it and Ashton wants to wake him up and whine about how it’s not fair for him to take a nap when everyone else is still scrambling to stuff all their clothes in their bags, but he doesn’t.

However, if he happens to tell Josh to go wake up Luke, then the blame can’t be set on him, so Ashton does that.

A very groggy Luke ends up helping Josh roll up his sleeping bag since the poor kid can’t tie it himself. Ashton goes through the cabin to make sure everyone’s propped their mattresses up just like they were at the start of the week. He helps the kids sweep up the cabin and peels the tape off the floor that he and Luke put down for their shoes.

Half an hour before the scheduled lunch at noon, Ashton tells the campers to double-check to make sure they’ve got everything, gather up their bags and their sleeping bags, and get ready to head down to the rec field. He reminds them to check under their bunks to make sure they haven’t left things behind, and then orders them to stand out in front of the cabin. Once everyone has dragged their suitcases outside, Ashton hears a strangled protest from Luke off in the corner. He goes over to Luke’s bunk to check on him and finds him sitting cross-legged on the floor, struggling to zip up his bag.

“Really?” Ashton says, crossing his arms in a condescending manner.

“Help me,” Luke whines. Ashton leans down and zips the bag up on his first try, earning an offended scoff from Luke. “That’s not fair,” he challenges.

“Life isn’t fair,” Ashton says in return. Luke grumbles. “You know you can just keep your bag in here? Counselors don’t leave until later in the afternoon and we can always come back in here as long as we don’t lose the key.”

Luke finally pushes himself off the floor so that he’s eye-level with Ashton, yet still (to Ashton’s annoyance) slightly taller. “As long as _you_ don’t lose the key.”

“When have I ever let you down?”

“Never,” Luke admits. “But we also only met like a week ago, so that’s not a very good argument.”

By the time their group makes it down to the dining hall, there are unfamiliar faces of parents everywhere and Ashton feels a bit intimidated when he remembers he’ll have to talk to some of them. Luke and Ashton gather their campers up in a circle right in front of the dining hall before letting them eat.

“If you guys see your parents, you’re free to eat with them,” Ashton explains. “Also…” Ashton trails off and looks past the kids when he sees Michael walk down behind them, throwing his hand up into a peace sign. He and his campers are all wearing sunglasses even though the sky is overcast.

“Hello, lovebirds!” Michael greets, directing it at Luke and Ashton specifically. Ashton sees Luke open his mouth to protest against Michael’s comment, but is cut off when Michael continues, “If you’ve been paying attention, you can probably remember me telling you that my campers and I had a special surprise planned for you at the start of the week. It’s taken days and days of training, but finally the time has come.” Michael begins counting down from three but stops suddenly to ask, “Unless you’re busy right now?”

“Well, yeah, kind of,” Luke answers.

“Can you say something annoying?” Michael asks.

Luke looks lost. “What… exactly do you mean by that?”

“Just, like, be your usual self. Say something annoying.” Luke opens his mouth to say something but then shakes his head, indicating that he’s got nothing. “Okay, um… say that you hate me.”

“I hate you,” Luke says.

Michael continues counting down from three and then his campers shout simultaneously, “Shut up, Nemo!”

(Coincidentally, Calum walks by just as this happens and nearly drops his plate of food onto the gravel)

Michael high-fives each of his campers and lets them head off to eat lunch, telling them he’s never been more proud. Luke forces out a sarcastic “thanks” and Michael claps him on the back.

“We know Nemo’s real name!” one of Luke’s campers declares. Another one conveniently supplies, “It’s Ashton.”

Michael first narrows his eyes in confusion, ignoring Ashton’s subtle cough.

“You believe that?” Michael asks. The campers look confused and Luke coughs as well. You should know that these two are great liars —”

“Don’t want to be late for lunch!” Luke spins the campers around and ushers them into the dining hall, mumbling something about hamburgers and tropical punch. Ashton waits until Luke and the campers are all inside the building before harshly elbowing Michael in the ribs, making sure to show no mercy.

“You’re no fun, you know?” Ashton grumbles.

“You kissed Luke last night,” Michael states abruptly, taking his sunglasses off and casually placing them on top of his head. That throws Ashton off and makes him widen his eyes. “Don’t look so shocked. Luke told me, of course.”

“Oh — oh.”

Michael stares intently at Ashton for a few seconds, waiting for him to say more, and then lets out a very loud groan when he doesn’t. “I’m kidding!” he cries. “Luke didn’t tell me anything, but thanks for the confirmation.” Ashton’s jaw hangs open and if looks could kill, Michael would most likely be dead. “Wanna tell me the details, though?” Michael asks. Ashton moves to step on Michael’s foot but is too late because he’s already jumped away, giggling as he jogs off into the dining hall. Suddenly Ashton feels someone wrap their arm around his shoulders and he startles, looking over to see Calum grinning at him, balancing that same plate of food he nearly dropped moments ago.

“You’ll be glad to know I saw that whole thing unfold,” Calum grins.

“You guys are supposed to be supportive!” Ashton says.

Calum chews, contemplating for a few seconds, and then says, “We’re your bros, not your bras.” Ashton glares at him and it’s a miracle Calum doesn’t choke on his food based on how hard he’s laughing at his own joke. It’s not even funny, in Ashton’s opinion.

Ashton takes the opportunity to head into the dining hall, leaving Calum standing alone outside, snickering about a lame joke and trying to regain his breath.

There’s a long table set up down the middle of the dining hall, and Ashton spends a good few minutes trying to decide between a hamburger and a hot dog. In the end, he decides on getting both. Ashton finds Luke sitting out on the deck with a group of campers whose parents haven’t come yet. He walks up to their table and pouts, waiting for someone to make space for him. Upon noting Ashton standing awkwardly at the end of their table, Luke points at his plate and snorts.

“I couldn’t choose and I compromised,” Ashton amends, setting his plate down next to Luke’s. Luke scoots down for him and Ashton takes a seat.

“By eating everything?”

“Life is so short,” Ashton says, tearing open a ketchup packet. “Everything is an all-you-can eat buffet. Except for things that aren’t.”

The campers at their table slowly disappear as lunch rolls on and their parents end up pulling them off to other tables. Ashton ends up meeting most of his campers’ parents and it suddenly begins to feel like a parent-teacher conference since most of them end up saying something along the lines of “I hope he wasn’t a bother for you!” Ashton introduces himself to the parents using his real name, and his campers shoot him a betrayed gasp each time.  (“I thought _you_ were Luke!” - everyone) Brandon’s the only one that doesn’t look betrayed, however, and instead does a short victory dance.

Unfortunately, Luke doesn’t seem to have the same charm with the parents that Ashton has. He ends up stumbling over his words and awkwardly not knowing what to say, which Ashton teases him about relentlessly once the parents have finished talking with him. Dylan’s one-year-old sister even ends up crying when Luke gives her a thumbs up, and the conversation with his parents ends up cut short because of that. It’s a bit of a joke, really.

 “You didn’t have to tell them the story of you throwing up in the bathroom,” Ashton hisses when the two of them go to throw their empty plates away in the garbage cans. “It’s not very charming.”

Luke opens his mouth to protest but is cut off when two of his campers run up to him and throw their arms around his waist, going off about how they’ll miss their favorite counselor. Luke blushes furiously and Ashton laughs.

“You’re my favorite counselor, too,” Ashton says once the kids have wandered off.

Luke rolls his eyes. “You’re only saying that because I’m hot.”

Ashton shrugs. “Well, Calum’s hot, too. He’s not my favorite counselor, though.”

There are a lot of hugs exchanged for the next half hour, and the number of campers and parents roaming the place drops rapidly. Ashton makes sure all of his campers promise to come back next year.

Just for good measure, Ashton takes two selfies with his group before letting them go — a serious selfie, and a goofy one just to end everything on a light note. Then he squeezes them all into one last tight hug and sends them off with their parents.

Soon the camp is empty and all that’s left are the counselors, many of whom have no plans to get cleanup parties started. Instead, Michael’s taken his guitar and he and Calum are parading through the dining hall, singing loudly to annoy a group of female counselors trying to stack up the chairs. It’s all fun and games until one of the girls ends up yelling at them for being “utterly useless” and Ashton takes that as his cue to head elsewhere.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t notice Luke pushing open the door of the dining hall as he walks out and he ends up spinning around, right into it. There’s a sharp pain on his forehead, he stumbles a bit, and his vision momentarily goes haywire.

“Oh, fuck,” Luke blurts out. He claps a hand over his mouth, partly at the realization of what he’s said, partly at the fact that he’s just nearly knocked Ashton out. _Again_.  “Are you okay?” Out of instinct, he grabs Ashton by the shoulders, as if to stabilize him.

“Are you trying to kill me?” Ashton asks, pressing his hand to his forehead where it feels like he’s been struck by a baseball bat. “I’ll be lucky if I return home without a concussion after everything that’s happened this week.”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Luke says, rubbing Ashton’s shoulder reassuringly. “I was looking for you anyway, so mission accomplished I guess?”

“Yeah, mission accomplished,” Ashton agrees sarcastically, rubbing at the pain on his forehead to make a point.

“I didn’t know you were going to turn around!” Luke protests. “So, um, is this a bad time to ask for the key to our cabin?”

“Yeah, it’s —” Ashton freezes when he reaches his hands into his pockets and finds out they’re both empty. “Um.” He digs around some more, hoping it’ll magically appear. “Oh, right! It’s in my jacket.”

Luke nods slowly. “Where’s your jacket?”

Ashton goes silent for a few seconds before answering in a suddenly quiet voice, “In my bag.”

“And that would be…?”

“In… the cabin…”

Luke doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even flinch. He simply stares at Ashton with a blank, yet intimidating, expression.

“Look, you just whacked me in the head with a door,” Ashton finally says.

“It’s okay. I mean, not the whacking you with the door part obviously, but the key. The head counselor probably has a spare.”

“No!” Ashton blurts out rather quickly. “Don’t — don’t go to the head counselor. Don’t say _anything_ about this. I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

“How are we gonna get in the cabin, then?”

“We’ll break down the door, I don’t know. Figure something out. Please,” Ashton begs.

When they get up to their cabin, the door is — just as they expected — sealed shut. Ashton does a 360 around their cabin, checking to see if they can get in through any of the windows, but he has no luck. Luke, on the other hand, doesn’t even try. He twists the doorknob a few times and gives up.

“I don’t understand why we can’t just ask for a spare key,” Luke mumbles as Ashton attempts to pick the lock with a twig.

It’s silent for a moment, just the sound of Ashton poking the doorknob with a stick, and then they hear the sound of crunching gravel and turn around to see a counselor stopped in front of their cabin. The first thing Ashton notices is that she’s pretty; she has long brown hair flowing down from her wide sunhat, and she’s hauling a wheeled suitcase behind her. Ashton bites back a remark on how rolling a suitcase down a gravel path isn’t a great idea, but if she’s made it this far, she must be making some sort of progress.

“Hey, Luke,” she says, sending a smile in his direction. Ashton turns back to the door and continues fidgeting with the lock, ignoring her just as she ignores him.

Luke, of course, says hi back, and they talk for a bit. Ashton tunes out most of their conversation, catching only bits and pieces. He doesn’t manage to catch the part where she offers to help open their door, though, and he’s startled when the girl climbs up the porch, reaches past Ashton, and sticks a key into the doorknob. She twists it and the door pops open with a click.

“You could’ve just asked someone,” she laughs. “The keys work for all the cabin doors. But, I mean, yeah. You could also try to pick the lock with a twig,” she finishes, pointing at the pathetic stick Ashton has in his grip. “I’m not sure if that would ever get you anywhere, though.” Ashton clenches his jaw. “I’m assuming not.”

Nobody says anything and the girl laughs to break the silence. Ashton’s not sure if it’s supposed to be a mocking laugh, but it definitely comes out like one. She bids them goodbye (or, she tells _Luke_ goodbye, rather) but not before she can hand Luke a folded piece of notebook paper.

“What is that?” Ashton asks when they’re both in the cabin with the door shut. He points at the note in Luke’s hand.

“Uh…” Luke carefully unfolds it and glares at it for a few seconds. “Her number.”

“So I take it you guys have talked before?” Ashton asks, trying to hide the jealousy in his tone but, to be frank, doing a piss-poor job of it.

“Not really,” Luke says. Ashton raises his eyebrows. “I mean, we talked this morning, yeah. Like, once. In line for breakfast. But that was it.” Ashton nods slowly, and Luke gives him a hurt look. “I’m being serious! I don’t know her.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Ashton says. He walks away before either of them can say anything else, heading for the jacket on his bunk. He wants to grab the key before they lock themselves out again and instead focuses on that.

“Come on!” Luke whines again as Ashton scoops the key out of his jacket’s pocket. “I wouldn’t go for her,” Luke reprimands, walking over to Ashton, hanging out by his bunk. “She’s… not my type.”

“What’s your type?” Ashton asks. It comes out in a patronizing tone.

“You.”

Ashton wants to roll his eyes at how cheesy that is, but doesn’t get a chance since Luke’s already caught him with a kiss, pushing him up against the wall between the bunks. As much as Ashton doesn’t want to kiss him back, he does anyway because he likes Luke and he’ll take any opportunity he can get to kiss him.

Ashton wraps his arms around Luke’s neck and pulls him in deeper. Luke moves his hand under Ashton’s shirt so his fingers are lightly brushing his skin. It’s nice being alone in the comfort of their own cabin, assured that the door is locked so no one can walk in.

But, gathering all the strength he has, Ashton suddenly pushes Luke away, as hard as it is for him. “You can’t get off the hook this easily,” he says. “I know you’re hot and all, but that won’t let you off.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Luke asks. “A blowjob?” Ashton inhales sharply at the thought. “I’m not giving you a blowjob at summer camp. Jesus, that has to be unethical.”

“Okay,” Ashton mumbles (trying to hide the disappointment in his voice). “You can start off with giving me your number.”

Luke contemplates that for a moment. “Smooth,” he says. Ashton makes a noise of agreement. He is fucking smooth. “Don’t have paper, though,” Luke says. “Well, I mean. I have that note from the brown-haired girl that you hate so dearly —”

“No, don’t use that,” Ashton orders abruptly. “I have plans for that.”

Luke narrows his eyes with wariness, nods a bit, and then reaches a hand out, palm facing up. “Gimme your phone, then.”

Ashton hands his phone over and walks to stand behind Luke, peering over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t look at things he shouldn’t be looking at. Luke types his number into a blank contact and sets his name as “Lukey”. Ashton tries to grab his phone back before Luke can add an overabundance of various heart emojis at the end, but unfortunately doesn’t grab it quickly enough.  

Fortunately, Ashton does manage to get it back before Luke can open up Flappy Bird.

They haul their suitcases out of the cabin and lock the door for the final time. The two of them lug their bags down the path through the woods and past the dining hall until the parking lot is in view. Ashton goes to stuff his bags in the trunk of his beaten-down SUV, and Luke simply trails after him blankly.

“You can go put your stuff in your car,” Ashton says after a while of Luke standing there and doing nothing.

“Um, can I put my stuff in your car?” Luke asks nervously. “I don’t — I don’t have a car,” he admits. “I was just gonna go home with Mikey. And I can’t put my stuff in his car yet ’cause I don’t exactly know where he is.”

Ashton refrains from “ _aww_ ”-ing at that and instead says, “Yeah, I don’t mind” and steps aside so Luke can put his bags away.

They go back into the dining hall, and this time a cleaning party is actually properly organized; the tables are pushed off to the sides, the chairs are all arranged in four stacks off in one corner, and the place looks even bigger than it originally was. Michael and Calum and the same group of female counselors from earlier are hanging out by the kitchen, feasting out of a bowl of mandarins while they laugh about something Michael’s just said. Probably an inappropriate joke.

Luke and Ashton sneak into their crowd tentatively, almost going overlooked until Calum blurts out, “Where the hell were you guys?”

“They locked themselves out of their cabin.” Ashton looks up, surprised to see brown-haired girl smirking at them from the other side of Michael. “I helped them out, though. It’s all good.” She points to Ashton. “He tried to pick the door open with a _stick_ ,” she snickers. “Like, I know school’s been out for a few months but I at least thought you would be smarter than that.” Ashton looks over at Luke, watching him open and close his mouth several times with no words pouring out, as if he wants to defend Ashton but doesn’t know how. Finally brown-haired girl says, “Hey, Luke.”

Anybody with a decent pair of eyes would notice the very unsubtle look Luke shoots Ashton. And Ashton assumes anybody — if not everybody — _does_ notice, judging the silence that falls among them.

“Hi,” Luke says forcefully.

“Luke, do you have that paper I said I had plans for earlier?” Ashton butts in. Luke tenses up. Right — brown-haired girl’s number.

“Yeah.”

“Can I see it?”

Luke’s eyes dart around frantically from brown-haired girl, to Ashton, and even to Michael who appears to be having the time of his life watching this fall apart.

“Right now?” Luke asks, lowering his voice.

“If you don’t mind.” Ashton shrugs.

Luke slowly digs around in his pocket and pulls his hand back out to reveal a crumpled piece of lined paper. He stares at it for a moment, deciding whether he really wants to do this, and then hands it off to Ashton.

Ashton places the paper flat on the counter and grabs the pile of mandarin peels accumulated next to the almost-empty bowl. “I’m just gonna take care of this,” he says, placing the peels onto the paper and folding the corners of the page up around them, like a blanket. He drops it into the garbage can behind him. “I like to clean up.”

He expects at least some sort of shocked gasp from the girl, but meets her eyes only to see her completely expressionless, yet still threatening.

“Who wants to have a paper airplane contest?” Calum chirps up, pulling a similar piece of notebook paper out of his pocket, complete with the same swirly blue numbers that Luke’s had.

“I’ll join you,” Michael says, pulling out his own version of the paper. Brown-haired girl pulls her phone out of her pocket and directs her attention to it as if she has nothing to do with this, scrolling away as she leaves their group. A few of the other girls leave with her.

“Is that a no to the paper airplane contest?” Calum says. “Okay. Maybe next time.” He tosses the paper into the garbage.

◊

Because many of the counselors spend most their final afternoon goofing off instead of cleaning up the camp like they’re supposed to, they aren’t allowed to leave until around five. The sun’s starting to set and a breeze has picked up, but the camp is practically spotless at this point. Luke, Ashton, Michael, and Calum put themselves in charge of cleaning up the amphitheater. Although it should’ve taken them no more than half an hour, it ends up taking a whole hour since Michael’s so keen on reenacting a few scenes from High School Musical on the stage.

The counselors split off in the parking lot, exchanging hugs and promising to keep in touch. Many of the male counselors have a hard time hugging their buddies, though, claiming it “lowers their status of manliness”. Michael and Calum, on the other hand, hug so tightly and for such a long time that Luke’s not sure if they’ll ever pull apart.

“You guys live like three blocks away from each other,” he says. They don’t budge.

“Hey,” Ashton says, touching Luke gently on the arm to get his attention. “Why can’t we be cute like them?”

“We can,” Luke supplies, reaching forward to pull Ashton into a hug. Ashton buries his face against Luke’s neck and breathes in his scent, because even though he has Luke’s contact information and will hopefully see him again, he kind of doesn’t want to leave him. “We can be even cuter than them,” Luke says, moving to press their lips together.

They don’t mean for the kiss to last too long, but they end up pulling apart sooner than expected when Michael and Calum start cheering them on and clapping for them.

“I love it when bros make out,” Michael says.

“We weren’t making out,” Luke insists.

“Still love it.” Michael claps Luke on the shoulder. “I’m driving you home, right?” Luke nods. “Put your bags in the backseat and feel free to have sex with Ashton before parting ways.”

“What the fuck,” Calum laughs. “Please, not in the parking lot.”

“We’re not  —” Ashton freezes and makes direct eye contact with Luke, who looks equally as alarmed, “— no. Stop. You guys are gross.”

After deciding that none of them have any grain of manliness left, the four of them exchange one last group hug before splitting up. Once they’re in their cars, they end up nonverbally fighting over who gets to leave the parking lot first. Michael settles it easily by flipping Ashton and Calum off and pulling in front of them.

“I swear to god if we get into a crash I’m never driving with you again,” Luke promises as Michael’s rear bumper misses Calum’s front bumper by less than an inch.

“You wanna hitchhike?” Michael asks. Luke snorts and leans over to turn up the radio. Though Michael’s car is pretty beat-up, his stereo system is top-notch since he had it replaced less than a month ago. It’s the one piece of his life he prides himself on.

Luke can already feel a wave of nostalgia hitting him when they pull onto the road. He can hardly believe it’s been a week and they’re leaving the camp behind — it feels like it’s been at least a few months. He still has the daisy chain bracelet Ashton gave him tied around his wrist, though it’s barely even one piece anymore. He knows it probably won’t be able to last another day, but he really wants it to last forever; he wants it to stay permanently. As corny as that sounds, he wants it to be immortal simply because Ashton made it.

It’s also that exact moment when Luke’s phone buzzes in his hand with a message from an unknown number.

**Hi it’s ash!!! You wanna see a movie later? I was thinking the ouija movie but we can always go for big hero 6 if you’re too scared :P**

A second text comes in a few seconds later.

**Also I’m driving now so I won’t be able to answer lol**

Luke laughs a little at the second message, leading Michael to ask, “Why are you smiling at your crotch?” Luke doesn’t answer; he simply taps out a response to Ashton.

**Not a big fan of horror :-( I say we should stick with big hero 6**

“Oh god,” Michael groans. “He just asked you out, didn’t he?”

“Fuck off,” Luke mumbles quietly, smiling as he clicks the send button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know how to address the fact that it's been two months :((  
> I guess I'll start off with an apology. School started and my life has literally been a rollercoaster of absurdities, and I just kept procrastinating this. anyway, I finally set a goal and we have reached the end!! thanks so much for all the support, it never fails to make my day :)  
> If you liked this story, feel free to follow me on tumblr or twitter (jpglashton on both) to keep up with me. You guys are the best and it makes me so happy to know there are people that actually read my works. I try to respond to as many comments as I can :) I'm definitely going to be writing more in the future!!   
> Again, I love you all and thanks for reading!!


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